
Book • U,Q>Os 



J'X 



THE LAST HUNDRED YEAES. 



Entered according to fhe Act of Congress in the District Court of the West- 
ern District of Pennsylvania, in February, 1845, in behalf of the PHILOMA- 
THEAN LITERARY INSTITUTE, as Proprietor, by Chahlbs Avery JEolmes 
and Austin Loomis, Committee, &c. 



THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS. 



LECTURE 

DELIVERED IN THE HALL OF THE WESTERN UNIVERSITY 
OF PENNSYLVANIA, 

ON TUESDAY EVENING, FEB. 4, 1845, 



AT THE REQUEST OF THE PHILOMATHEAN LITERARY INSTI- 
TUTE, AND PUBLISHED IN AID OF THE LIBRARY 
FUND OF THAT ASSOCIATION, 



BY 



GEORGE UPFOLD, M. D. D. D. 



President of tbe Board of Trustees of the University, one of the Counsellors of the Historical Society 

of Western Pennsylvania, and a Corresponding Member of the National 

Institute for the promotion of Science. 



PITTSBURGH : 

PRINTED BY GEORGE PARKIN, FOURTH STREET. 

1845. 



Pittsburgh, Feb. 10, 1845. 
Rev. George Upfold, D. D. 

Dear Sir — At a regular meeting of the Philomathean Literary Institute, hold 
Februai-y 6th, the undersigned were instructed to request a copy of your Lecture 
delivered on the evening of the 4th inst., for publication. 

Permit us, Sir, whilst discharging our duty, to express our warmest acknow- 
ledgments for the Lecture, as well as for the kindness you have ever manifested 
toward us individually and the Institution we have the honor to represent. Be- 
lieving the publication of your Address would be not only instructive to othera, 
but is due to its merits, we earnestly request a copy at your earliest convenience. 
Yours, very respectfully, 

CHARLES AVERY HOLMES, 
AUSTIN LOOMIS, 

Committee on Lectures. , 



Mount Hobart, Feb. 11, 1845. 
To Messrs. Charles Avery Holmes and Austin Loomis, Committee, Sj-c. 

Young Gentlemen — In compliance with your request, I send you a copy of 
my Lecture delivered on Tuesday evening last, though with much misgiving as to 
the accordance of the public in your judgment of its merits. Should it be found 
serviceable in aiding you in the increase of your Library Fund, my utmost expec- 
tations from its publication will be met; and this, from the intei-est I feel in the 
success of that important and laudable object of your exertions, it will give me 
unfeigned pleasure to learn. 

Very truly and respectfully, your friend and well-wisher, 

GEORGE UPFOLD. 



THIS ATTEMPT 

to sketch some of tlie prominent features of the 

LAST HUNDRED YEARS, 

is reverently inscribed, as a sliglit tribute of respect from its author, 

whose earliest recollections as an Albany boy, 

are associated with the person and fame of the distinguished 

individual, 

STo tf)0 i^emori> of 

the incorrupt Patriot, the upright Statesman, 
the gallant Soldier, the active and zealous defender of his country's 
liberties, 
MAJOR GENERAL PHILIP SCHUYLER, 
of the Army of the Revolution, 
a conspicuous actor in the early political and military events 
of the pei-iod commemorated ; 
whose eminent services in the field were recompensed by unfounded 
suspicions, and ungenerous imputations, in the National 
Councils, which supplanted him in the 
command of the Northei-n Army on the eve of the conflict 
that resulted in the brilliaiit victory of 
SARATOGA, 
to which, his military genius, indefatigable exertions, 
unshaken constancy, and great personal sacrifices, in the preliminary 
preparations, mainly contributed ; 
and to whom was justly due the glory of the triumph 
and the laurels bestowed on a moi-e popular, though not more 
deserving Commander. 



THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS, 



Ladies and Gentlemen : 

It is with no little hesitation, that I enter on a duty which 
I have undertaken to discharge this evening, at the request 
of the young gentlemen of the University composing the 
Philomathean Institute, who have originated this course 
of Literary and Scientific Lectures, to aid them in collecting 
a library. The interest I feel in their important undertaking, 
and my earnest desire that it may be eminently successful, 
would not allow me to decline their invitation to address you, 
though I fear I may be unable, in the discussion of the 
subject I have chosen, to meet the reasonable expectation 
of this intelligent audience. But the Rubicon is passed — 
my theme and my engagement have both been announced. 
I therefore respectfully solicit your attention to a brief retro- 
spect of the events of the last hundred years, in their 
'political^ 2)hysical, and moral aspect. 

The subject is one of great interest. The last hundred 
years is a period of extraordinary character, abounding in 
extraordinary events, and developing an extraordinary pro- 
gress of society in almost every respect ; perhaps more so 
than any other period in the history of our race. To notice 
1 



10 

all the events, and results of events, which stamp it with this 
extraordinary character, would be impossible ; for the history 
of a century cannot be spoken in a brief hour. A sketch of 
the more prominent features can only be attempted ; and even 
this, in many instances of great interest, must necessarily be 
a sketch ; and the whole discourse an outline only, amount- 
ing to little more than an aggregate of hints. 

Our own country, politically the creation of the last hun- 
dred years and less, makes a conspicuous figure in the history 
of the period, in the several aspects in which I propose to 
consider its leading events. And the influence which, though 
the youngest among the nations, it has exerted, and is ex- 
erting upon other nations, and upon the general progress of 
civilization, is far from being inconsiderable, as I hope to 
be able to shew; nay, indeed, entitling it to be regarded as 
a great and efficient agent. 

Less than one hundred years ago, the greater part of 
these United States — I may say all except a narrow strip 
bordering on the Atlantic, and settled here and there in 
spots ; all at least west of the Alleghenies — was one " vast 
wilderness, one boundless contiguity of shade." Its solitude 
was unbroken, save by beasts of prey, and prowling savages 
in the chase, or in the w^ar-path. Nature, in all her wild 
sublimity and beauty was there ; but no sign, no trace of 
civilized man. Her mountains reared their hoary heads in 
majesty as now ; her rivers flowed in the same channels, 
and with the same grandeur ; her immense inland seas spread 
their wide expanse of waters to the bright sunshine, and anon 
to the stormy wunds and tempests ; and her cataracts, which 
now attract the w^ondering gaze of travellers from distant 
lands, poured forth their roaring torrents, filling the poor 
Indian as he drew near with mysterious awe, hushing his 
faintest whisper, causing him to regard the scene as a special 



11 

dwelling place of the Great Spirit whom he adored, and 
look up, from these master-works of nature unto nature's 
God; whose glory, to his untutored mind, was displayed in 
the gorgeous rainbow that over-arched the stream, whose 
voice he thought he heard in the deep-toned thunder of the 
falling waters, and whose resistless power he discovered in 
the rushing flood, and in the raging billows of the abyss. 
But all beside w^as silence and solitude and savage wildness. 
Where, now, cultivated fields and the cattle on a thousand 
hills indicate the presence and the industry of civilized man, 
adding life, activity, and beauty to the prospect ; there stood 
in thick array and gloomy grandeur, the hoary monarchs 
of the forest ; and there stalked, in his native pride and 
freedom, like a lord of creation, the dusky warrior, "the 
stoic of the ^voods — the man without a tear." Where, 
now, hundreds of smiling hamlets, and numerous cities 
spread their contiguous dwellings, resonant with the cheer- 
ful hum of business, and the stirring scenes of social life, 
then, the only traces of man and his works, were the wig- 
wams of the children of the wilderness, grouped together 
at long intervals in temporary villages, surrounded by patches 
of rude cultivation, and exhibiting the huplements and tro- 
phies of war and the chase. 

On this spot — to bring the contrast more immediately 
home — on the site of this and the adjoining city of smoke, 
and jets of steam, and noise and stir, one hundred years 
ago, nay less, the foot of the white man had never trodden. 
It was the undisputed home of the red man, and of the 
wild beasts of the forest ; of the former, if tradition truly 
speaks, a favorite resort, and one which he yielded with 
more reluctance than many others to the pale-faced aggres- 
sor, when he at length appeared, clothed w^ith no right but 
might and cunning craftiness — no claim but his insatiate 



12 

cravings, and superior power. Where, now, the plains ad- 
jacent to the two noble rivers which here unite, forming a 
still nobler one, the Ohio — are now thickly covered with 
houses, and stores, and manufacturing establishments, and 
work-shops of various kinds, with long lines of gas-lit streets 
— itself, in practical application, an invention of the period 
under consideration — where nearly an hundred churches con- 
secrated to the worship of the true God are vocal every 
Lord's day with His praise ; where public schools and 
private seminaries, and this flourishing Collegiate Institution 
afford the means of mental cultivation to hundreds of youth ; 
where Themis has a temple, erected on the site of an an- 
cient aboriginal tumulus, which, in chasteness of architectural 
design and style, in finish and proportions, and in magni- 
tude, is not surpassed by any in the land, and w^ould not 
suffer in comparison with some palaces of princes in older 
countries ; where wealth, flowing from untiring industry, 
abounds, and the comforts, with the luxuries of life, have 
taken the place of the simple fare, the scanty subsistence, 
the manifold privations, and the eminent perils of the early 
pioneers ; here — one hundred — nay, little more than sixty 
years ago, all was a wild and gloomy solitude, save here 
and there an Indian cabin, enlivened at intervals, only by 
the deer or other animals of the chase, flying before the 
whizzing arrow of the hunter, or bounding in sportiveness 
through the glades of the forest ; and the red man treading 
his deep-worn trail in sullen dignity and moody silence, or, in 
some opening on the river bank, mingling in rude pastimes 
with the warriors of his tribe, or, painted and accoutered 
for war, watching, in some covert, the approach of an ex- 
posed foe, or, rushing, with his startling battle cry, into the 
deadly strife. Where, now, a scene of great commercial 
activity and bustle presents itself daily and hourly, and 



13 

sometimes are seen forty, fifty steamboats lying side by 
side — themselves an invention of the last thirty years — 
some discharging freight from cities as large or larger than 
this, distant hundreds of miles, in what, within a short pe- 
riod, was a wilderness too ; and others taking in the pro- 
ducts of our own industry and skill, with the imported 
commodities of foreign climes ; ready to spread them with 
almost the speed of the wind on the bosom of our mighty 
rivers, over the great West ; might then be seen a solitary 
canoe of frail materials, slight structure, and rude work- 
manship, drawn up on the beach, or carefully concealed 
among the bushes that fringed the margin of the stream, 
or, at times, several, filled with the tawny savages gliding 
down "the river of beauty," to hunt or to battle with an 
enemy. Where, within fifty years, or less, a narrow path, 
trodden only by pack horses with their burdens, was the 
only channel of communication with the seaboard ; whence 
all that was not of the coarsest production, whether food 
or clothing, or merchandise, was obtained, among other 
articles salt and iron, now our own staples ; at the present 
time are numerous roads, traversed in commodious vehicles, 
public and private, and in as many hours between place 
and place as it then occupied days. These, moreover, 
superseded in part by the practical application of an inven- 
tion of a date little over a dozen years, which, through 
the instrumentality of the mighty agent, steam, almost real- 
izes, as is commonly said, the fond lover's wish, annihila- 
ting time and space — and, in part by a navigable canal of 
upwards of three hundred miles in length, if we include, 
as well we may, about forty miles of railroad, surmounting, 
by means of incHned planes, the very summit of the Alle- 
ghenies, which, from the contrivance of section boats, lifted 
out of the water on either side, without unloading, and 



14 

transported over the road to the can;d is, to all practical 
purposes, a continuation of die same. This convenient 
and speedy channel of communication — I am speaking of 
the communication between this city and the east in our 
own state — winding at the base of, and here and there 
passing through, in artificial tunnels of several hundred feet 
in length, mountains, once an insuperable barrier to the 
traveller on horseback and on foot, by the side of, across, 
and, for certain distances, in the bed of streams, many of 
them of considerable size, which flow in its course, termi- 
nates at length here by an aqueduct across the Allegheny, 
now being reconstructed on a plan, itself another invention 
of the age, sustained by cables of wire manufactured on 
the spot ; which, w^ith three noble bridges that span that 
river beside, and one across the Monongahela, give egress 
and ingress to more passengers in one hour, than, formerly, 
the solitary ferry over each, in a day, perhaps in a week. 

In less than one hundred years, these changes, and many 
more beside, have been brought about among ourselves. — 
Indeed, subjects of contrast, of admiring, astonishing con- 
trast, multiply as the mind adverts to the past, and contem- 
plates the present ; causing us to live, as it w^ere, in some 
fairy region, and to be the subjects of some fairy agency, 
rather than among practical realities, the results of the in- 
genuity, the skill, the wealth, the indomitable perseverance 
of man ; guided, however, let it not be forgotten, and con- 
trolled in all these things by Him who alone giveth wisdom, 
directs it in its application, and crowns the application with 
success. 

And if here, in our own neighborhood, in our own county, 
and within the limits of our own commonwealth, such won- 
derful changes have taken place, in the last hundred years 
and less ; what, did time and my present purpose permit. 



15 

what a picture might be presented of similar astounding 
changes in other parts of our land : and in the old world 
too, for there the same agents have been at work, though, 
from a measurable want of contrast, not with the same strik- 
ing results as with us ; and the face of society in a variety 
of respects, has undergone material and signal transforma- 
tion. It is, indeed, a period of wonders every where, and 
in all countries. The mind can scarcely grasp the reality, 
so rapid, so surprising, so powerfully influential have been 
its social transitions ; so extraordinary the events which 
have followed each other in quick succession ; and so sur- 
passing all conception the progress of society, in civilization, 
in intellectual cultivation, in literature, in arts and sciences, 
in the diffusion of civil and rehgious Hberty, in all things, 
alas! but in the moral character of man himself, in which, 
if there be improvement, its mode of indication is strange 
and doubtful, and if evincing more refinement and less 
grossness, yet little less depravity. 

But the events and results of events, the changes and 
improvements of the last hundred years, are far too nume- 
rous to be contemplated singly and in detail. To notice 
them even briefly, they must be grouped together in classes 
and thus examined ; and even in this way, imperfect as it 
is, a mere glance, as it must necessarily be with me on 
the present occasion, there will be found subjects enough 
of interesting and instructive contrast. 

The events of the last hundred years, contemplated in 
their Political Aspect, afford food for much and wondering 
thought. In the year 1745 — taking it as a general era — • 
arbitrary power may be said to have reached its acme on 
the continent of Europe ; a portion of the world, which for 
many centuries had exerted a controlling influence on the 



16 

polity of all civilized nations, as indeed, it does now to a 
great extent, and will perhaps for centuries yet to come. 
At this era, all Europe ; with the exception of the small 
domain of Holland, nominally a republic ; and Great Bri- 
tain, in which a spirit of liberty had long been rife among 
the people, and was, as it is now, cherished as a precious 
birth-right by the bone and sinew of the nation ; all Europe 
beside, was ruled by despots in fact though not always in 
name, and of its milhons of inhabitants, all but the privi- 
leged orders, and they in degree, were virtual slaves. — 
Thence, this unhallowed power began to decline : first 
among the educated and intelligent classes, owing to the 
labors of the philosophers of the age, which were directed 
towards its correction^ and abatement, and the introduction 
of more liberal principles; in which, however, from the 
want of a right basis, they erected a superstructure of totter- 
ing workmanship, which ere long overwhelmed them in the 
destruction its sudden fall brought upon the despotism they 
zealously but irreligiously opposed and condemned, and 
aimed to mitigate and reform. Then, as the principles of 
the philosophers spread and were embraced, it declined, 
theoretically, among all classes, except the ignorant peas- 
antry, but slowly and almost imperceptibly, and not in 
any respect practically, until the era of the French revo- 
lution, when a general sense of oppression, gave wings to 
the long cherished desire of freedom, and a flame was 
kindled, which, from the nature of the materials that fed it, 
burst forth into a destructive conflagration, involving all 
that was good with all that was evil in the political fabric, 
in its resistless rage. In its influence, however, since it 
burnt itself out, it has been instrumental, in no small de- 
gree, in diffusing a legitimate spirit of freedom, and in 
giving a salutary tone of sentiment to the political circles of 



17 

Europe, not excepting the cabinets of Russia and Turkey, 
both of which have been greatly modified of late years, and 
more liberal principles imperceptibly but surely insinuated 
into their public councils. The spirit of liberty thus gene- 
rally diffused among the mass, and finding its way also into 
the bosoms of rulers, has produced a decided improvement 
in the condition of the governed, and created an universal 
sentiment, to which sovereigns and their advisers, though 
many of them with a bad grace, have been obhged to yield. 
Hence, the political constitutions granted, or rather extorted, 
in several European kingdoms, in which, previously, the 
will of the monarch was very much the supreme law, and 
the ruled were subjected to the capricious tyranny and 
oppressive exactions of their rulers, with no settled standard 
of rights to appeal to in defence, or fall back upon in just 
resistance. 

The impulse to this change in the tone of public sentiment, 
one of the beneficial effects of the French revolution,, was 
given in this country, by our successful struggle for national 
independence. These two events, therefore, the American 
and French revolutions, deserve particular notice, as well 
for their contrast as for their resemblance, and their respec- 
tive results ; and are prominent and striking features in the 
political aspect of the last hundred years, claiming our es- 
pecial consideration. 

In 1745, the pretensions of the house of Stuart to the 
throne of Great Britain were forever put to rest, by the 
suppression of the last attempt of the exiled family to re- 
gain the dominion from which it had been deposed, in 
the utter discomfiture of its adherents at Culloden under 
Prince Charles Edward ; and the Hanoverian dynasty firmly 
seated in its place. General domestic tranquillity ensued 
and continued ; and, with occasional popular outbreaks, which 
2 



18 

were promi^tly put down as they occurred, has continued 
to the present time. And it is a fact, w^orthy of particular 
notice in the history of the period under consideration, that 
from that day to this. Great Britain, though engaged in wars 
of defence and of aggression, and mingling in the conflicts 
of a world at one time in arms, has never had her own soil 
touched by the foot of an invading foe, nor been called to 
encounter an armed host of her own immediate subjects in 
intestine war. Once, within the period, Ireland experienced 
a temporary visitation from an inconsiderable foreign force, 
but Great Britain never. She has sat alone and undisturbed 
in her sea-girt home, enjoying the blessings of domestic tran- 
quillity and all the advantages of peace, advancing uninter- 
ruptedly in the arts and sciences and civilization, manufac- 
turing for nearly all the w^orld, supplying the adjoining 
continent with the sinews of war, and aiding her allies with 
her fleets and armies, extending her empire in distant lands 
by discovery and conquest, grasping on every plausible pre- 
text the possessions of other nations, but losing none of her 
ow^n, save her American Colonies, now these United States, 
which her reigning monarch regarded, as well he might, the 
brightest jewel in his imperial crown. One hundred years 
ago, Britain, as before observed, being relieved from all fear 
of the deposed dynasty, her rulers found themselves in cir- 
cumstances to strengthen their political power, and proceeded 
cautiously to do so. In this efibrt, the principles of arbitrary 
power, for a while dormant, began to be revived as instru- 
ments to this end. Under the third George, they had gained, 
and were gaining a marked ascendancy. That monarch had 
himself been educated in lofty and rigorous notions of the 
royal prerogative, in which he was confirmed and encour- 
aged by his confidential counsellors, though manfully opposed 
in the Imperial parhament by a large and influential minority. 



19 

This opposition extended to his American Colonies, where 
the principles of civil liberty had been early and deeply im- 
planted, and had found a congenial soil. The finances of 
the Kingdom having become embarrassed, from an immense 
expenditure on continental wars during the two preceding 
reigns, and from other causes, resort was had to additional 
taxation, in which, to avoid as much as possible popular 
clamor at home, it was determined to include the colonies, 
and impose on them a large share of the burden. They 
resisted, on the ground that the mother country had no right 
to tax them without their consent. They were willing to 
contribute a reasonable share of means in rehef of the national 
burden, but insisted on doing it by a vote of their own legis- 
lative assemblies, in which they were fairly represented ; and 
they appealed to the justice of the King and his cabinet, and 
the imperial legislature, to listen to and grant their request. 
Their appeal was answered by unmerited reproaches, and 
by an arbitrary and oppressive enforcement of the obnoxious 
enactments. The result is a matter of history and need not 
be dwelt upon. A contest began, which, after seven years 
of war, terminated in the acknowledgment of the political 
independence of the United Colonies, and their enrollment 
as a federative republic among the nations of the earth. It 
was a contest chiefly for abstract principles ; and this distin- 
guishes it from the revolution which grew out of it, and from 
all other revolutions recorded in history. The oppression 
complained of, and successfully resisted, was not great in 
itself, but it was oppression, and it involved principles and 
results dear to the hearts of freemen. The tax proposed to 
be levied was of inconsiderable amount even in the aggregate, 
and would scarcely have been felt individually by the poorest 
of the colonists. But they beheld in the demand an entering 
wedge to other and more serious aggressions on their liber- 



20 

ties ; and less for their own sake than that of their posterity, 
they determined to resist. 

The American revolution stands alone and unrivalled in 
history, as well as a prominent feature, shedding a bright 
lustre on the political aspect of the last hundred years. 
In its accomplishment, as in its conception, it is a remark- 
able event, and one which entitles its projectors and agents 
to the gratitude and veneration of their descendants. It 
was not, indeed, acheived without bloodshed, but it was 
far from being sanguinary. Whatever cruelties were per- 
petrated in individual cases, the councils, whether civil or 
military, which directed its movements, were not open to 
the imputation of either cruelty or tyranny. Its chief agents 
were honorable, high minded, moral, nay, religious men, 
governed by the purest patriotism and love of liberty, whose 
principles were admired even by those who opposed and 
condemned their acts. Seldom, if ever, has the world seen 
an assemblage of precisely such men. They were states- 
men as if by intuition, with minds of the highest order, 
intelligent, sagacious, determined in purpose, cool in action, 
eminently wise in council, as the records of their delibera- 
tions, and numerous documentary papers shew, and brave, 
skilful and undaunted in the field. It would seem, as if 
Divine Providence had raised them up purposely for the 
exigency, signally adapted as they were to the important 
and difficult work they achieved. They were intellectual 
and political giants ; we look not upon their like in the 
best and brightest of their successors, and may not look 
upon their like again. Of late years, indeed, the due meed 
of praise has been virtually denied to some of them. It 
has been very much the custom with certain anniversary 
orators, at the recurrence of the frosty season, among other 
standing topics of laudation, to ascribe nearly all the credit 



21 

of our revolution, at least of its inception and primary move- 
ments, and the spirit and principles of liberty which brought 
it about, to the descendants of the Puritans. I am not dis- 
posed, nor do I mean to question their patriotic claims. 
But while I would not rob them of a single laurel in their 
well-earned crown, yet, in admitting their exclusive claim, 
as it is virtually asserted and proclaimed in the laudatory 
harangues of their admirers and eulogists, I should be doing 
great injustice to their compatriots in the revolutionary con- 
flict. The spark, I am free to admit, was first laid to the 
train in New England, and by New England men ; but the 
train had been long prepared in other parts of the country ; 
and, indeed, at a very early period of the preHminary diffi- 
culties, had well nigh exploded in its whole length by the 
action of the House of Assembly of North Carolina; and 
the author, or he who has the credit of being the author, 
of the Declaration of Independence, is said to have been 
not a little indebted, in the composition of that celebrated 
document, to a document of a similar character, emanating 
at an earlier date, and previous to the commencement of 
hostilities, from Mecklenburgh in that state, under legisla- 
tive sanction. The descendants of the Hollanders and of 
the English and Scotch in New York and New Jersey, of 
the Germans and Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania, of the Irish 
of pure descent in Maryland, of the old English cavaliers 
in Virginia and North Carolina, and of the Huguenots in 
South Carolina, were as firm in their resistance of the at- 
tempted oppression of the mother country, and from the 
start, as were any of those first mentioned, and as lavish 
of their blood and treasure in maintainence of their inde- 
feasible rights and in the achievement of the national inde- 
pendence. All this is a matter of history, and it need not 
be enlarged on. But it is simple justice and ought not to 



22 

be left unspoken. And it detracts nothing from the credit 
of the sons of New England, while it gives due credit to 
their equally deserving associates. In truth, the conflict was 
a struggle of sons and brothers of the same family against 
the aggressions of a common parent in his distant island 
home, who had lost his love for, and in regard to their 
claim on his fostering care, had become a cruel step-father 
towards his adventurous children, who with much labor and 
many privations, were building him up an empire in a re- 
mote and savage wilderness ; and who were willing and 
ready to yield a reasonable share of their hard earnings as 
a free gift, but not as a debt and a right. Where all did 
their duty, and dared their utmost in the common contest, 
and all were moved by the same spirit and pursued with 
indomitable courage and perseverance the same lofty end, 
it is invidious to discriminate and claim for one class, what 
is equally due to all. Such sentiments did not prevail, at 
least were not openly expressed, in those days of mutual 
trial and difficulty, and they ought not to be entertained 
and countenanced now. 

The American Revolution was accomplished in part by 
foreign aid. At the commencement of hostilities with the 
mother country, France, not from any particular love of 
liberty, either in the abstract or in the concrete, but for 
the sake of crippling and humbling an ancient and for- 
midable foe, took an interest in the struggle, connived at 
the supply of munitions of war by her subjects, loaned 
money to the patriots, and at length, when the time ap- 
peared propitious, aided actively and openly with her fleets 
and armies. She came to the rescue in a needful season, 
and gallantly did her sons contend in the then doubtful 
conflict. It could hardly have been expected that her 
brave warriors should have failed to partake more or less 



23 

of the spirit and sentiments of those whom they came to 
assist, and with whom they were long and intimately as- 
sociated in the camp and in the battle-field. They had 
had constantly before them, an example calculated to incite, 
practically, that lov^e of liberty which many of them had 
previously imbibed in theory. And so it was. When 
they returned to their native land, they carried with them 
the principles of freedom, and spread them with good 
effect on a soil previously prepared for their reception, 
and among a people groaning under oppression which 
they discerned and keenly felt, but knew not how to re- 
medy. The soldiers from America were apt teachers, and 
when a favorable opportunity presented itself, efficient in- 
struments. That favorable opportunity ere long arrived. — 
A monarch, good, but weak and imbecile, who deserved 
a better fate, misled by bad advisers, and embarrassed by 
circumstances growing out of the mal-administration of his 
predecessor on the throne, for which he was not respon- 
sible, increased the public burden until it became intolera- 
ble. Down with tyranny, became the popular cry, which 
roused the whole kingdom in open resistance to their 
rulers ; and the French revolution commenced, receiving 
its impetus from that of the American colonies. But 
how different in its character, its immediate events, its 
conduct, and its results ! The latter sprung from princi- 
ple ; the former from passion. The result of the one was 
rational freedom ; of the other unbridled licentiousness, 
leading first to anarchy, and then to despotism. The 
French people had much to complain of, much to lay to 
the charge of their rulers ; but they took a cruel, san- 
guinary and indiscriminate revenge. Famed for their suavity 
of manners, and for the courtesies and refinements of social 
life, they became at once brutal and ferocious, a nation 



24 

of infuriated demons, whose every act was written in cha- 
racters of blood. Under the abused name of Uberty, they 
inflicted the most cruel and revolting tyranny. In attempt- 
ing or professing to correct long standing abuses, they 
aggravated instead of curing the disease by the remedies 
they employed. In resisting and restraining arbitrary pow- 
er, the burden of their complaint, they demolished at one 
fell swoop the entire fabric of government, overthrew the 
throne and the altar, denied the God who made them, 
deified reason in the person of a shameless courtezan and 
impiously worshipped at her shrine, set up in a desecrated 
temple of the Most High ; and to quiet an accusing con- 
science, if any remained unseared by the dominant atheism, 
inscribed on the sepulchres of the dead the soul-chilling 
sentence — "Death is an eternal sleep!" The leaders of 
this revolution too, were assimilated in character and prin- 
ciples to their revolting and sanguinary acts. They were 
monsters of cruelty, licentious, profligate, treacherous, tyran- 
nical, blood-thirsty wretches, whose very names at this 
distance of time, inspire horror, indignation and deep dis- 
gust. And what was the result? Anarchy; and then a 
despotism far more stern and oppressive than that which 
had been overthrown; an iron rule, well and truly sym- 
bolized by the iron crown, snatched in ruthless conquest 
from its rightful possessor, which the despot wore, in con- 
nection with the imperial diadem, won by his fame as a 
successful warrior, and amid the sanctions of religion nomi- 
nally restored to its former sway, and invoked or rather 
constrained to grace his triumph, self-placed on his own 
head. Yet there was glory and good too in that despotic 
rule. Napoleon was a tyrant of a new creation and order. 
He carefully studied the interests of his subjects, while he 
enslaved them to his will; and was at once their oppres- 



26 

sor and their benefactor. France will long have cause to 
remember a man who raised her, as if by magic, from a 
state of political misery and degradation, to an height of 
prosperity, grandeur, and power, unexampled in her annals : 
and who, while he was prodigal beyond all precedent of 
her blood and treasure, and drained her of her sons to 
recruit the armed legions who worked his will among the 
nations, enriched her tenfold with the spoils of his con- 
quests, and benefited her unspeakably, in her internal con- 
cerns, by the creations, intellectual and physical, of his 
mighty mind, his fertile genius, his sagacious wisdom, and 
his indomitable perseverance. 

But what a feature in the political aspect of the last 
hundred years, the history of his achievements and of his 
fate! In the brief space of seventeen years, an emperor 
wielding the destinies of Europe, and save one nation and 
our own republic here, for a time giving law to the world ; 
and then a prisoner on a barren rock in the distant ocean, 
and dying there, an exile, and a captive, in the hands of 
the only foe whom he dreaded, yet affected to despise, 
and in the zenith of his power had failed to conquer, 
nay to subject in the smallest degree to his ambition and 
aggrandizement. And the empire he created and extended 
beyond the limits of almost any former conqueror, what 
changes has it undergone since his fall ! Merged at first 
in the dynasty which had been overthrown and exiled, its 
territory reduced within its ancient boundaries and the re- 
stored monarchy sustained for a time by the armed powers 
whom the deposed emperor had long subjected to his sway : 
then again subjected to a revolution and that dynasty de- 
throned and banished, and a constitutional monarchy, a 
kingdom in name but a republic in fact, created on its 
ruins : and what in itself, and especially relating to us, 
3 



26 

is worthy of at least a passing notice, the occupant of 
that powerful throne, was once a fugitive and an exile in 
this country, among others, and for a short time, with his 
two brothers, resided in this very city, whence he set out 
in a small open boat to descend the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi. These are changes of wonderful character in the 
political aspect of the period under consideration, and 
fraught with lessons, important lessons of political and mo- 
ral wisdom. 

There are many other equally signal features which cha- 
racterize the last hundred years, and make it an extraor- 
dinary period in the political history of the world — an age 
indeed of revolutions — the origin of which are clearly trace- 
able to the events we have been dwelling upon, and the 
principles emerging therefrom, exemplified thereby, and made 
universally and energetically influential. The southern por- 
tion of this continent affords many striking instances, the 
end of which cannot as yet be discerned, nor even pre- 
dicted. In Europe, Poland long a bone of contention 
between several contending potentates, bent on adding her, 
or a portion of her territory to the dominions of each, 
has at length fallen before the grasping ambition of the 
Muscovite, and ceased to be a kingdom. The ancient 
empire of the Turks has been dismembered of one of the 
fairest portions of her domain, by a successful revolution ; 
and the crescent superseded by the cross in the Morea 
and its sea-girt dependencies. And what remains of Mus- 
sulman domain, from the spreading and salutary infection 
of free principles, combined with a constant outward pres- 
sure of aggression from a contiguous power, seems tottering 
on its foundation and ready to fall. In the distant East, 
the period under consideration, is also distinguished by 
wonderful events, which have followed each other in rapid 



27 

succession, moved more or less by the same spirit, or a 
modification thereof, which has wrought such marvels nearer 
home. An empire has there grown up within the last 
fifty years, from inconsiderable and unpropitious beginnings, 
at first the unaided enterprise of a company of merchants 
in London, and then sustained and fostered by the fleets 
and armies of the crown, before which the ancient dynas- 
ties of that orient land have fallen and well nigh disap- 
peared, their barbaric pomp and splendor gone, and their 
subjects and their wealth become the spoil of the successful 
aggressors : an empire, which if not arrested in hs career 
of conquests by the antagonistical power of Russia opera- 
ting in an opposite portion of the same country, bids fair 
to embrace within its lion talons the greater part of Asia. 
Within the same period, the same expanding power, has 
colonized the continent of Australia and the adjacent islands, 
and is building up an empire there, far exceeding in extent 
of territory, her Asiatic provinces. And at length she hath 
brought China to terms, humbled the pride of the Celestial 
Empire, forced her from her exclusiveness, constrained the 
Brother of the Sun and Moon to yield to her prowess 
and indirecdy to submit to her sway. The ports of this 
jealous, selfish and ignorant nation are now, through Bri- 
tish arms and diplomacy, freely opened to the barbarians ; 
and commerce on her thousand wings is hastening to par- 
take of the advantage. And in immediate connection with 
this, and not among the least of the remarkable events of 
the period we are considering, shewing, moreover, the wide 
spread influence of political principles of home origin, which 
in a measure, the proudest and most arbitrary nation on the 
earth, has felt, is the fact — I was going to call it the 
phenomenon, for such it would have seemed an hundred 
years ago — that a commercial treaty has recently been ne- 



28 

gotiated with the Celestial empire, under the auspices of 
the stars and stripes of our gallant ships of war, and on 
the most favorable terms, by the accredited ambassador of 
a nation of seventeen millions of people, which seventy 
years ago was not a nation. And, let me add, as illustra- 
tive of the facilities of intercommunication between countries 
the most remote, by means of steam navigation, in addition 
to the improvement of other modes of transportation — another 
marked feature of the period — the negotiator has travelled 
out and back, traversing almost an entire circuit of the 
globe and accomplishing his errand, all in about eighteen 
months. 

The last hundred years, then, it will be perceived from 
the brief glance we have given at the political aspect which 
it presents, is a most singular and extraordinary period in 
the history of the world ; full of startling and astounding 
changes, and displaying an advancement, receiving its first 
impulse — it is not boasting but truth to say — in an high 
degree from our own political example, which the mind 
is scarcely able to follow in its successive steps to its 
present lofty eminence, and can with difficulty realize, seem- 
ing as it does more like a dream of the imagination, a 
poetical conception and flight, than a sober and truthful 
fact. 

And equally extraordinary is the same period in its 
Physical Aspect; in arts and science, in mechanical inven- 
tions, in commercial enterprize and discovery, and in the 
agents which have given to all these their spring and move- 
ment, and rapid improvement and progress ; which I proceed 
in the next place, with as much brevity as possible, to 
consider. Within the last hundred years, while all the 
older sciences have been brought to a great degree of per- 



29 

fection, and many of them, from closer investigation and 
more accurate experiments, have undergone, in principles 
and in practice, an almost entire change, new sciences have 
been developed and promulged and successfully prosecuted^ 
Astronomy is not changed in its prnciples, but many im- 
portant discoveries have been made confirmatory of its prin- 
ciples, and new facts have been added to its former truths. 
By means of the perfection to which the telescope has been 
brought, within the period under consideration, one planet 
of the first magnitude, with four others of smaller dimen- 
sions and somewhat anomalous character, denominated as- 
teroids, have been discovered and examined in the vast solar 
system. In natural philosophy generally, there have been 
continued and valuable discoveries, and an extraordinary 
progress — particularly in chemistry and electricity. The 
former has advanced with a rapidity, which no one, unless 
a close and constant student and investigator of its mysteries, 
is able to follow. Its essential elements have been ascer- 
tained and determined, its nomenclature has been increased 
by a vast number and variety of new combinations of those 
elements, its principles settled on a firm and rational basis 
of facts elicited by experiments, and its various agents, 
instruments and mechanical apparatus, brought to an aston- 
ishing practical perfectness, while its application to the useful 
arts has been continually multiplying in number and in value. 
And the latter, electricity, with its homogeneous sciences, 
galvanism and magnetism, springing into activity and impor- 
tance from the genius, discoveries and experiments of our 
own philosopher Franklin, keeping pace, pari passu, with 
chemistry and lending it essential aid, has recently developed 
itself in a novel mode of practical application, in Europe, 
and particularly in this country : a mode which seems more 
like a dream of romance than a sober reality ; in which. 



30 

as exemplified in the electro-magnetic telegraph of Professor 
Morse, now in successful operation between Washington and 
Baltimore, and about to be extended to all the principal 
sea-ports, intercommunication of intelligence is afforded be- 
tween places hundreds of miles apart, with almost or quite 
the rapidity of lightning, and with all the accuracy of typo- 
graphy. Medicine and surgery, with all the branches of 
the healing art, have, w^ithin the period under consideration, 
experienced, an almost entire revolution, in their theory and 
practice and the remedies employed, and have exhibited 
decided and astonishing improvement as well as progress ; 
in the repudiation of the affected mystery and charlatanry 
of a former age ; in the simplified prescriptions and more 
rational and philosophical principles of the physician; and 
in the exquisite skill, and bold and dexterous and succesful 
operations of the surgeon. So also with the science of 
war — for science it is — in both arms, military and naval ; 
with a studied and philanthropic effort, among all civilized 
nations, to mitigate its horrors, it has been systematized in 
its principles, simplified in its details and its materiel, sig- 
nally improved in its commissariat and hospital provisions, the 
latter especially, from the glaring defects of which formerly 

" For want of timely care, millions have died 
Of medicable wounds;" 

and while rendered less sanguinary in its actual operations, 
made more practical and efficient in all its bearings and 
relations. Civil engineering, within the period, has received 
an extraordinary impulse, and developed its onward march, 
in the construction of former works with greater skill, and 
in novel works, of which a former age never dreamed, nor 
the present until very recently. Among these railroads, and 
the passage of these and navigable canals through moun- 
tains, in artificial tunnels of hundreds of feet in length, cut 



31 

through the sohd rock; and most astonishing of all, in one 
memorable instance in England, the successful underworking 
of the bed of one of its deepest rivers, by a tunnel of solid 
masonry, for the transit of foot passengers and carriages, 
while the superincumbent stream is undisturbed, and bears 
on its bosom a thousand gallant ships freighted with the 
commodities of all countries, and all climes. New sciences, 
moreover, have been added to the bright array of human 
knowledge, prominent among which are geology and miner- 
ology, with an almost entire new cast of botany and other 
branches of natural history. 

In the useful arts, in their principles, in the mechanism 
employed, and in their application to the wants and com- 
forts and luxuries of man, we observe the same wonderful 
progress. Manufactures of every description have been 
carried to a high pitch of perfection, while they have mul- 
tiplied in kind beyond all former experience. Agriculture 
and horticulture have both partaken largely of the pro- 
gressive march of the age, and in the former not only is 
more skill brought to bear on the cultivation of the ground, 
but new staples, one in particular, cotton, have been dis- 
covered and added to agricultural production and applied 
to manufacturing use and consumption. The fine arts too 
have participated in the general advancement ; and while 
some of the ancient which were supposed to be lost, 
painting on glass for example, have been revived and re- 
stored, all have been essentially improved, and new modi- 
fications of existing branches, as Hthographic engraving and 
the daguerreotype, have been invented and successfully em- 
ployed. If in painting there is not so visible a progress, 
and the palm still belongs to the older masters, in en- 
graving they have been far exceeded both in style and 
execution ; and in sculpture equalled and in some instances 



and respects excelled. In this latter art, the genius and 
talent of some of our own countrymen have been signally 
developed. There is one specimen, illustrative of this 
remark, which fell under my own observation a little more 
than a year ago, executed within the last two years, in 
which is evinced a close approximation to the choicest 
productions of ancient art, to which I am constrained, 
by the pleasure it gave me, and the genius it displayed, 
to mention. It is the marble bust of a female, in the 
possession of a gentleman of Cincinnati — a spot itself less 
than sixty years ago a wild uncultivated forest — the first 
fruits of the talent he fortunately detected in a youth of 
that city and generously encouraged and fostered ; sent from 
Italy as a tribute of gratitude from the promising protege 
to his kind and liberal patron. It is a figure of perfectly 
classic proportions, of exquisite finish, of the most natural 
and life-like expression, with drapery so gracefully disposed 
and so skilfully imitated, as almost to deceive the eye into 
the beUef, that it is of other materials than the cold marble 
of the statue, purposely thrown over the shoulders to in- 
crease the effect ; and in one respect unique, evincing a 
triumph of genius and skill seldom if ever seen in any 
ancient sculpture of the human form, and that is in the 
delineation of the hair, which is as perfectly and naturally 
executed with the chisel as it is in the paintings of the 
best masters with the pencil. It is in appearance soft, 
silky and natural hair, arranged in graceful and flowing 
tresses ; an imitation of great difficulty and which most 
artists seem on that account to neglect, contented with 
coarse rope-like chiselling ; and in this instance affording 
of itself, an exemplification of the improving genius of the 
youthful artist, Powers, and a bright presage of his future 
excellence. 



33 

In connection with what has been mentioned as distin- 
guished features in the physical aspect of the last hundred 
years, must not be overlooked, although more curious than 
profitable, the invention of the balloon, and the several 
aerostatical voyages which have been successfully accom- 
plished by individuals more daring than wise, in Europe, 
and at a later period in this country. Of these, I think 
two were commenced in this city as the starting point, in 
one of which, the intrepid aeronaut Clayton, traversed a 
distance of more than an hundred miles in a few hours, 
and descended either on the summit of the Allegheny moun- 
tain or on its eastern side, having in a previous instance 
in an ascension at or near Cincinnati accomplished twice 
the distance in an unprecedented short space of time. Some 
facts in aerology have been ascertained, and some phenomena 
explained by these aerial flights ; though not of any very 
great practical importance. There are, however, expeditions 
of another character, confined to terra firma, or rather em- 
bracing the earth and the ocean, which deserve especial 
remembrance, as well for their utility as for the adventurous 
courage and unconquerable perseverance which characterize 
them all. These are numerous voyages of discovery and 
scientific observation ; beginning with the successive enter- 
prises of Byron, Wallis, Carteret, Cook and Mulgrave, at 
an early day in the period we are glancing at ; embracing 
subsequent expeditions of French, Russian, British and other 
European navigators, conspicuous among which are the bold 
and perilous and repeated attempts of Ross, Franklin and 
Back, in successive years, to work their way amid the ice- 
bound waters of the arctic ocean, and partly by land, in 
search of a supposed northwest passage from the Atlantic 
into the Pacific ; and terminating in the recently completed 
voyage of discovery and exploration, set on foot by our own 
4 



34 

government, in our national vessels of war, and conducted 
with consummate skill and much and gratifying success, by 
its bold and scientific commander. Captain Wilkes, and his 
gallant associates, in which the antarctic ocean was pene- 
trated to an extreme of southern latitude never before reached, 
and important acquisitions made to geographical and natural 
science. And with these maritime enterprizes, numerous 
land journies by adventurous and scientific travellers of dif- 
ferent nations, including several of our own. In the wilds 
of the north and the west of our own territory, across the 
Rocky mountains to the shores of the Pacific ; in South 
America ; in the interior of Africa ; in Egypt, embracing 
the successful attempts of Belzoni and Champolion to ex- 
plore and unveil the mysteries of the pyramids and other 
magnificent structures, mostly ruins, of that land of wonders ; 
and not of small importance and interest, the perilous pil- 
grimage of Stevens and Catherwood amid the forests of 
Yucatan and the adjacent provinces, in exploration of the 
marvellous ruins of long-buried cities, temples and palaces 
of a by-gone people, of extraordinary architectural skill and 
resources, as these remains demonstrate, of whom neither 
history nor tradition afford the faintest trace. These various 
adventures, undertaken chiefly by men of scientific attain- 
ments and for scientific purposes, have added directly and 
immensely to the accuracy of geographical knowledge, and 
indirectly enriched almost every other department of science, 
particularly that of natural history. 

And where has not commercial enterprize penetrated within 
the last hundred years? What nook In the wide world, in 
any way accessible, has it left unvislted and unoccupied? 
North and south, east and west, in the torrid and in the 
temperate zone, in the frigid arctic and ice-bound antarctic 
seas, commerce, facilitated in her movements by signal im- 



35 

provements in naval architecture and in astronomical and 
geographical science, and led on by the courage, perseve- 
rance, enterprising spirit and nautical skill of the hardy 
seaman she hath cherished and employed, hath spread her 
snow-white wings, and flown over the wide expanse of 
ocean, with a restless activity, and untiring energy, une- 
qualled, nay unapproached in any previous age. And not 
the least remarkable, nor least important of the results of 
her extraordinary activity and energy, is the successful navi- 
gation of the ocean in vessels propelled by steam, and the 
practical application of that singularly useful element, not 
only to merchantmen, but to ships of war. And these vessels 
moreover, constructed in many instances — in this country 
first by the enterprise and skill of mechanics of our own Iron 
city, with one or two inconsiderable exceptions elsewhere — 
of a material which a former age would scarcely believe 
buoyant, solving a then much disputed question, and prac- 
tically proving that iron will swim and float like wood on 
the bosom of the deep waters. 

This mighty agent, steam, or rather its practical applica- 
tion to machinery and particularly to navigation, is one of 
the greatest wonders of the last hundred years, and so im- 
mense, various and beneficial are its advantages, that it 
deserves, did time allow, more than the brief notice to which 
I am restrained. What astonishing changes has it accom- 
plished ? What, rather, has it not accomplished ! What 
an impulse has it given to the spirit of commercial and 
manufacturing enterprise in all countries and not the least 
in our own ! In the old world it hath achieved immense 
triumphs, in the arts, in the scientific pursuits, in internal 
communication, in intercourse with distant lands, heretofore 
reached only by expensive, tedious and perilous modes of 
conveyance, now a mere trip of pleasure, and the journey 



36 

accomplished in as manys days, as it formerly occupied weeks 
and months. It has practically abridged the boundless ocean 
of its distance, and reduced its wide expanse of waters to 
almost the limits of a narrow frith. Rivers, which once 
seemed to bid defiance to human art and power in their 
navigation by their impetuous stream, are now ascended 
with ease and rapidity, and in the face of wind and current. 
Manual labor, and the labor of beasts of burden, are to a 
great extent superseded ; the deep recesses of the earth are 
penetrated, and the miner aided in bringing forth its hidden 
treasures ; and immense masses of materials are moved to 
and fro with the ease of a feather. In every branch of the 
mechanical arts and in every kind of manufacture, from the 
most attenuated thread, and the most delicate fabric of the 
loom, to the cumbrous product of the forge and tilt-hammer, 
this mighty agent is potent, in facilitating the labor, pro- 
moting the convenience, and aiding the industry of its intel- 
ligent director, man. 

And as it is in the old world, so it is in the new, and 
among ourselves ; nay in a more extraordinary manner in 
the nature of the results it has produced and in the rapidity 
of their developement. To me it seems like a dream, so 
brief comparatively is the lapse of time, and so multiplied 
and wonderful the effects of the successful adaptation of 
this new motive power to machinery, which I have lived 
to behold, since in my early boyhood, while angling on the 
wharf at the capital of the Empire State, Albany, I beheld 
the arrival of the first vessel ever propelled by steam the 
distance between that city and New York, with Fulton himself 
on board, receiving the congratulations of his friends, many 
of them skeptical to the last, and enjoying the triumph of 
his genius, perseverance and mechanical skill. And what 
have I — what have all of us seen since ? Improvement of 



37 

the invention itself which beggars all previous conception, 
and a perfection attained which the mind of the successful 
applicant in its loftiest anticipations never reached. Enter 
a room in the national mint at Philadelphia, in dimensions 
not half the size of this hall, and you will see a steam 
engine of such exquisite workmanship and nice adjustment 
of its several parts, that the sound of its movement is 
scarcely louder than the ticking of a watch, and yet of power 
sufficient to move all the various and complicated machinery 
employed in the extensive coining operations there carried 
on. Go on board of one of the floating palaces which, 
propelled by steam, now navigate the river on which Fulton 
successfully experimented, and mark, not only its size and 
commodious accommodations, but the perfection of its mo- 
tive power, the ease with which, leviathans as they all are, 
it is managed, and, like a thing of life glides along the 
surface of the stream, despite of wind and tide. In his 
most sanguine anticipations, the ingenious inventor never 
anticipated such perfection of his new mechanism. 

Only about thirty years have elapsed since the intro- 
duction of steam navigation on the great lakes and rivers 
of the west ; on the latter of which, the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi, especially, the practical philosopher and successful 
applicant of this new motive power anticipated his greatest 
triumph ; and in that time, it has created in the west half 
an empire, and advanced us in settlement, in cultivation, in 
internal commerce, in all that enters into civilization, more 
than a century. The mind can scarcely grasp the reality 
of its achievements, and utterly fails in any anticipation of 
its constantly cumulating results. Already we see it proposed 
to construct a railroad across the prairies and winding through 
the valleys of the Rocky mountains to the territory of Oregon 
on the shores of the Pacific : which, though to us it appears 



38 

a visionary scheme, is not more visionary than forty years 
ago the navigation of our rivers by steam would have been, 
and probably was, thought; and there are those of us who 
may yet live to see this seeming wild and improbable pro- 
posal carried into effect. In other respects too what won- 
derful and beneficial effects have followed the introduction 
of this mighty agent ! And if no other benefit had resulted 
from its varied application to all that concerns our personal 
and social advantage and our national prosperity, the bond 
of union which it hath created between the different integral 
parts of the republic, and is continually cementing and 
strengthening, by the close, constant, and mutual intercourse 
between our citizens, which it facilitates, would of itself 
merit for its original applicant the richest meed of national 
gratitude, and weave a garland of imperishable laurels around 
his brow. But alas ! for our national honor, he experienced 
little of this while he lived, and since his death, it has been 
shamefully withheld, and therefore virtually denied to the 
heirs of his fame, whom he left behind in comparative desti- 
tution. The benefits are staring us in the face every where, 
daily and hourly ; but the benefactor, in our selfishness or 
thoughtlessness, is forgotten. There has, it is true, been 
much talk on the subject, year after year, in our national 
legislature, where the responsibility in a great measure be- 
longs, and the means are abundant. The obligation has 
been recognized, and there has been occasional, but as yet, 
abortive action. This very session of Congress a bill has 
been introduced in the Senate providing for some payment 
of this debt of national gratitude ; but, receiving as usual 
the blows of some of our penny wise legislative economists, 
like *' a wounded snake it is still dragging its slow length 
along" with little hope of other than the previous fortune 
of such an attempt, a lingering death, postponement and 



39 

consequent defeat. Legislators of my country ! be just, if 
not generous, and grateful to one of her noblest sons and 
benefactors, and suffer not the national escutcheon to be 
stained any longer by a negligence so cruel and a reproach 
so foul. 

The topics which have been adverted to with others of 
less magnitude, though of equal novelty and wonder, which 
cannot be even named within the limits allotted me, con- 
stitute the last hundred years a period of singular interest 
and importance — nay to use a word which as lover of the 
Saxon I would gladly avoid if I knew of a substitute — 
unique^ in the physical history of the w^orld. And they 
suggest a train of reflections and inspire anticipations, which, 
did time allow, it would be both delightful and instructive 
to follow up and expand into their probable future effects 
and influence upon the social system at home and abroad. 
But I fear I have already w^earied your attention, if I have 
not exhausted your patience ; and I hasten in conclusion, 
to touch in a general way on some of the pominent features 
which distinguish the moral aspect of the period under 
consideration. 

By Moral Aspect, I mean, not its religious, but its intel- 
lectual, in contradistinction to its political and physical charac- 
ter : the operation of mind on mind, in science, education 
and general literature, its agencies and its results. Yet, in 
a strict religious point of view, this period of the world's 
history is far from being wanting in much that is remarkable, 
nay truly wonderful ; and were this the proper time and 
place for such discussion, it would afford interesting and 
instructive topics of consideration. But the discussion is 
of too sacred a nature to be introduced here and on this 
occasion. And besides, what I might have to say in relation 



40 

to it, might be regarded as affected by professional and 
ecclesiastical bias, and my candor be suspected and my sup- 
posed prejudices magnified. This much, however, I may 
be permitted to say, as a general result of my observa- 
tion, knowledge and reflection, and I trust without offence 
or unfavorable imputation ; that although religion, during 
the period in question, particularly of late years, has occu- 
pied an unusually large share of public attention, it is much 
to be feared, this attention has been more formal, than prac- 
tical and fruitful in good ; and that there is a seeming 
unreality in its personal influence and exemplification, dispro- 
portioned to the various, cumulative, and, in some instances, 
magnificently conceived plans for its spread and progress, 
which the age has brought forth. It has been very much 
the fashion to be religious in a certain way and to ascertain 
extent, to engage in the promotion of popular religious 
measures, and to talk and gossip about religion. But the 
beneficial influence of the religious movements of the period 
on the actual moral improvement of our race, in the true 
and permanent bettering of the inward man, and in the 
sum of religion in its reality ; if we may judge from the 
prevailing tone of public sentiment every where, the loose 
principles, the vitiated taste of the times, the singular want 
of probity, the wholesale frauds of individuals and cor- 
porate associations, and the vast increase of vice and crime, 
with the countenance they receive, or the stern rebuke they 
fail to receive, in quarters where the former is not, and 
the latter is to be expected ; the influence of these move- 
ments is small and meagre, in proportion to the number 
and variety of the schemes they embrace, and the immense 
expenditure of money and effort and glowing speeches in 
their prosecution. In morals strictly, the world appears to 
have gone back, rather than forward. One cause of this 



41 

may be, the mechanical character, so to speak, of most of 
the enterprises set on foot and attempted to be carried on. 
And in some instances, may it not be inferred from the 
nature of the agencies employed, nay courted — agencies 
of an extraneous and exceedingly questionable character, in 
reference to which, on the slightest reflection, and at the first 
blush, the emphatic disclaimer would spontaneously spring up, 

Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istis, 
Opus eget? 

As, for example, the employment, in the promotion of the 
laudable and important cause of temperance, of reformed 
drunkards as they are denominated ; men picked out of 
the gutter one day, and the next or nearly so, transformed 
by the magic influence of the ])ledge into lecturers on pub- 
lic morals, and sometimes foisted into the sacred desk, there 
to expatiate on the comforts of their recent lodging place 
in the open air, and relate their ex])erience^ their beastly 
experience, in the presence and hearing, not only of the 
rougher, but of the gentler sex. God's work, it is to be 
feared, has been attempted to be done too much as if it 
were man's work, and to be accomplished in man's ways, 
and in man's time, and more dependence has been, seem- 
ingly, placed on individual scheming, tact, address, energy, 
eloquence and zeal, and the much boasted concentrated 
effort of human associations, than on Him, and the one 
visible society of His institution and organization, who can 
alone inspire wisdom to plan, and give power to execute 
with efficiency and success. 

But I am perhaps going too extensively into a discussion 
which I have pronounced to be foreign to my present 
purpose, and I proceed, without further digression, to the 
consideration of the prominent features in the intellectual 
aspect of the last hundred years. 

5 



42 

The changes and revolutions in this respect are many 
and wonderful. In the exact sciences, with several new 
scientific creations which have been cursorily noticed in our 
glance at the physical aspect of the period, there has been 
decided advancement, nay, I might say with truth, astonish- 
ing progress. And if in moral and mental science there 
has been less change and progress, it may be attributed, not 
so much to want of interest and attention, as to the nature 
of the subjects they embrace. Moral philosophy, from its 
strict relation to revealed religion, which emanates alone 
from God, cannot well be expected to have been much 
improved by man. And mental philosophy, from the sphere 
of its operation, the nature of its investigations, and the 
impossibility, for want of sufhcient data of well ascertained 
facts, of applying to its inquiries the inductive system, with 
the same certainty and effect as to the physical sciences, 
has exhibited no very marked changes, and little comparative 
advancement, except in the simplification of former systems 
greater logical precision, clearer and more practical reasoning, 
and generally a purer style. New theories — systems as they 
are called by their authors — have, indeed, been promulged 
and taught ; and have proved on examination, to consist 
in little more than a novel classification and phraseology, 
remoulding, rearranging and giving expression to old truths 
and speculations. And of these, some that have attained 
considerable temporary celebrity, have been found, from 
their decided infidel tone, sentiment and tendency, to be 
unsafe, because truthless guides. Among the noveUles in 
mental science, phrenology must not be omitted, though far 
from being of the importance in the elucidation of the 
phenomena of mind, which its teachers and votaries some- 
what ostentatiously set forth ; and partaking, in its principles 
and tendencies, very much of the sceptical character of the 



43 

last mentioned philosophical systems. Political economy, 
almost a new topic, and which has taken rank as a science 
within the last hundred years, has been extensively pur- 
sued, attained a great degree of perfection, and called forth 
and displayed a large amount of laborious investigation and 
intellectual sagacity and power. 

The general literature of the period has in some respects 
advanced and improved, in others retrograded and degene- 
rated. In its higher departments, in history, biography and 
travels, in which several of our own countrymen, Prescott, 
Sparks, Irving, Bancroft, Stevens, and recently Wilkes, have 
taken high and deserved rank, signal improvement has been 
manifested and an increasing progress ; and with brilliant 
genius, a chaster style and parer taste, more patient and 
laborious research, greater candor, clearer and more truthful 
delineation and more philosophical reasoning and deduction, 
have, in comparison to a former age, characterized the 
prominent authors of each class. The poetry of the period 
has undergone some striking revolutions. In its more lofty 
kinds there have been few additions, and epic song has 
seldom been heard, and v/lien heard, has fallen on the ear 
faint and weak, compared with former times. But in its 
less elevated forms, poetry has partaken of the changes 
and the progress of the period ; the formal and artificial 
versification of the preceding age has given place to more 
varied, sprightly, natural, yet equally dignified measures ; 
the harp has been struck in a novel style by master hands, 
each with a genius and manner peculiar to himself, and 
in all respects worthy compeers of the bards of former 
days, claiming equal rank on the bright roll of poetic fame. 
With these exceptions, the general literature of the period, 
though it has experienced changes and in some respects 
has undergone an entire revolution, is not improved. Much 



44 

of It is mere trash ; much Hcentlous and profligate in its 
tone and tendency ; all light and trifling and uninstructive ; 
partaking very much of the unsubstantial and evaporable 
nature of the mighty agent, which, of late years, in its 
application to the machinery of the paper mill and printing 
press and the common means of transportation and locomo- 
tion, facilitates its multiplication, and gives vent and wings 
to its crude, barren, indigested and too often mischievous 
and poisonous eff'usions. In the language of a facetious 
contributor to one of our monthly periodicals, a few years ago, 

" The world is much bc-volumcd in these days ; 

Steam moves the press, methinks the writers too; 

Vapor and smoke and puffing win the race ; 

Angels and Saints! what can't machinery do? 

Romances, novels, poetry and plays 

Are cheap: scarce covering cost of ink and paper, 

All which we owe to thee, most potent vapor! 

Subjects — the raw material — fail apace ; 

And scarce the stuff to make a song remains ; 

Bards rise like fungi, or the Triton race, 

Richly endow'd with every thing but brains !" 

If there is not much poetry, there is much truth in this 
description. It is exceedingly happy in its delineation of 
the great body of the general literature of the age, and of 
many of its producers. Books are multipHed, freely pur- 
chased because nominally cheap, and read with avidity, but 
with litde effect, save a morbid appetite, a vitiated taste, 
a dissipated mind, a disincUnation for solid instructive reading, 
an aversion to sober and useful study, and too often licen- 
tious principles and corrupted hearts. There are many 
brilliant exceptions among the authors of what is strictly 
light literature : many writers of tales and other works of 
fiction have sprung up, whose purpose is and the effect 
of whose efforts have been, to mend the manners and 
improve the heart; and have manifested in their productions, 



45 

in plan, subject, and execution, and especially in moral 
decorum and right religious sentiment, an infinite superiority 
over a similar class of writers of a former age. But in 
comparison of the mass, they present only here and there 
an oasis in a wide and dreary desert; and are indeed 
exceptions to a general rule. 

Education is a feature in the moral aspect of the period, 
which has been strongly developed and in an improved 
form; not indeed, so materially, in its higher departments, 
as in relation to the common branches of learning. One 
hundred years ago, pretty much all the education of the 
poorer classes of children, consisted in an introduction, by 
some good old dame, into the mysteries of the horn-book 
and the primer ; and the principal treatise for their private 
reading and amusement, when they had mastered the former, 
were those instructive productions. Little Red Riding Hood, 
the History of Thomas Thumb, the Giant, and Mother 
Goose's Tales. In respect of books for children alone, 
school and reading books, there has been a complete change 
for the better, and manifest improvement and progress. The 
elementary works put into their hands are admirably adapted 
to their capacities, while those for amusement are calculated 
to instruct and improve the mind at the same time that they 
interest and engage the attention. 

But it is the more general diffusion of the means of educa- 
tion, its systematic extension to the mass, and not the least 
important, and speaking highly for both the genius and phi- 
lanthropy of the age, its extension to classes heretofore, in 
the mysterious providence of God, denied its privileges — 
the deaf and dumb mute, and the hapless blind, the former 
now, vicaria lingiia mami, enabled to participate the de- 
lights and benefits of knowledge, and the latter, by means 
of books of raised letters and the sense of touch ; — that 



46 

education presents itself as among the prominent and noble 
features of the moral aspect of the period. The invention 
and introduction of the Lancasterian System, and its still 
more useful and efficient modification by the late Dr. Bell 
of Madras, all of which are events of the last hundred 
years, have greatly facilitated the diffusion of common prac- 
tical education, and opened a way to a class, far the most 
numerous in every community, a way heretofore almost 
wholly closed to such, to intellectual light and knowledge. 
Education is the glory of our age, a precious privilege, a 
blessing of magnitude, fraught with incalculable benefit to 
its professors, and through them to society at large. And 
so far as Common Schools are concerned, it cannot be 
too much encouraged, increased and diffused ; particu- 
larly in this country, where in theory and practice both, 
the people govern, and where the mass, if uneducated and 
unenlightened, are exposed a ready prey to the machinations 
of designing demagogues under the guise of patriotism, with- 
out a check and without a remedy, to the serious injury 
of the national weal, and in time to the undermining and 
prostrating of our political liberty and the entire fabric of 
our Republic. Common Schools commend themselves 
as the best, most practical and efficient remedy for this 
not improbable nor remote evil ; and cannot be too much 
multiplied. But Colleges may, and in truth are, and 
that to the serious harming of sound and solid learning, 
and the general interests of the community ; frittering, I 
had almost said triturating, science into meagre superfi- 
cial attainments in both pupils and teachers ; and flooding 
the learned professions, annually, with aspirants, bringing 
with them from many of these multiplying seminaries, though 
accredited with diplomas, ixirtes minimce eruditionis ; men 
who might have earned an honest living at least in agri- 



47 

cultural or mechanical pursuits, if they had not done more, 
but who make too often a sorry figure at the bar, at the 
bed-side of the sick and in the sacred desk. 

But a distinguishing feature in the moral aspect of the 
last hundred years, and the last which there is time to 
notice, is the expanded and expanding influence of the 
press, the mighty agent of most of these changes and this 
progress, political, physical and intellectual; for to all, it 
hath directly or indirectly contributed. What do we not 
owe to the press ! What wonders has it accomplished ! 
How immense its capabilities ! It has advanced itself, 
while it has pushed forward almost ev^ery thing else. Since 
the application of steam power, and the invention of stereo- 
type plates, its influence for good or evil has become almost 
inimitable. And in truth, it must be allowed to be an equivo- 
cal benefit ; in its legitimate freedom, and in the diffusion 
of useful knowledge, intelligence, science and sound learning, 
a blessing of magnitude; but in its licentiousness, in minis- 
tering to the vitiated taste and corrupt principles which it 
too often creates, and in pandering, and giving expression 
and circulation to the unhallowed and malicious passions of 
men, an unmitigated curse. 

The influence of the Press, as a feature of the period 
under consideration, is strikingly exhibited in its manufacture 
of what is called public sentiment, and public opinion, of 
which theoretically, but little so practically, it is the boasted 
representative. One hundred years ago, there was no public 
opinion, strictly speaking, and in the modern sense of the 
term, certainly none of any amount; and what litde there 
was, was slow in being formed, and inert and inefficient when 
formed, compared with what it is now; and confined more- 
over to a limited class. For many years past, and of late 
years particularly, by means of the press, it is kindled in- 
stantly and diffused with the rapidity of the wind. And it 



48 

has contributed much, nay perhaps more than almost any 
other agent, to the present social improvement and advance- 
ment. But it is not unattended with disadvantages, nay with 
great and serious, and growing evils. Enlightened public 
opinion is invaluable to any community and any state, par- 
ticularly in a land of constitutional freedom, and one of the 
chief securities and safeguards of virtue and liberty. Unen- 
lightened public opinion, perverted public opinion, the crea- 
tion of ignorance, prejudice, and passion, is but the supple 
tool of the unholy and vicious agencies which give it birth 
and currency and consequence, fraught with all that is hurtful 
to public morals and private virtue, to the interest of indi- 
viduals and the common weal. And such too generally is 
its character and influence now. Sometimes, and with the 
thinking, sober, upright and charitable, it is candid, generous, 
discerning, discriminating, just : but oftener and with too 
many, from want of thought and due enquiry, from pre- 
judice and passion, or from carelessness, it is partial, unjust, 
malicious, vindictive, libellous ; hasty in its bad conclusions 
and its condemnation, but slow in coming to a better mind, 
and when satisfied of its injustice, slower still in acknowl- 
edging its error and in making reparation. Emanating from 
the all powerful press, its boasted representative and expo- 
nent, it is frequently rather its sole creation ; and instead 
of being the honest unbiased judgment of the public, it is 
the prejudiced judgment of a few individuals, accidentally 
placed in a position to give, and possessed of the means 
of giving, their own personal, one-sided, capricious tone to 
public sentiment; and whose opinions and decisions are 
received as oracular, because they are printed ; for, old 
woman like, whatever is printed, is accounted by many 
who are not old women, necessarily true, and is eagerly 
and voraciously swallowed. 

Public opinion — it is not unjust or illiberal to say, for I 



49 

wish to be and shall strive to be neither, in the remarks I 
am offering, and while I " nothing extenuate, set down naught 
in malice" — public opinion is for the most part the manu- 
facture of the public press, which claims for itself this 
power and somewhat ostentatiously at times parades before 
our eyes its sense of its importance and influence in this 
respect. And as a fair specimen of the common feeling, 
that ah urio disce omnes^ I quote the language of the editor 
of a distinguished southern journal, in a late number, copied 
into one of our city papers. "We have hear'd," says he, 
*' shallow pates and boobies sneer at journalism, as a pro- 
fession of inferior dignity and responsibility. What an idea! 
if such minds are capable of ideas. As connected with 
politics, education, science, religion, and all the great move- 
ments and impulses of the age, the Press is ijaramo^mt to 
any j)ower recognized hy the laws of our country. Every 
where and in every thing its influence is felt. **** 'Four 
hostile newspapers,' said the great Napoleon, *are more to 
be feared than an hundred thousand bayonets.' In our own 
country there is not a man in office, from the President, 
down to the amphibious keeper of a floating light, who does 
not need its support, and dread its opposition." Language 
of a similar tone and spirit is frequently employed by others 
of this important profession. Now all the dignity claimed, 
I am willing to concede, and still more so, all the respon- 
sibility ; but the latter in a different sense from that w^hich 
is probably meant, in a sense which many of the conductors 
of the newspaper press appear to lose sight of, or be in- 
different to ; their moral responsibility. Forgetting this, or 
regardless of this, the public opinion they manufacture, often 
does little credit to the agents and machinery that produce 
it, is of the flimsiest texture, and most uncertain character; 
in its fluctuating hues, resembling very much the fabric 

6 



56 

known among the ladies, I believe, as changeable silk, 
which exhibits at every motion of the wearer, alternately 
and in quick succession, red, yellow, blue, green, and all 
the colors of the rainbow ; and in its best estate incon- 
sistent and variable as the wind, changing its phases oftener 
than the moon, "every thing by turns and nothing long;" 
condemning to-day men, and measures and principles, which 
it applauds and eulogizes and advocates to-morrow. 

Such in many respects and in many instances is public 
« 
opinion, which, through the medium of the newspaper press, 

has, within the last hundred years, obtained so marked an 
ascendency. And what wonder! when we look at the general 
character, complexion and spirit of the sources whence it 
emanates, the public journals of the day ; from which — with 
many honorable exceptions which it would give me pleasure 
to name, did time and occasion allow^ — little else can well 
be anticipated. Take up one of these journals and examine 
its multifarious contents. What an heterogeneous mass ! 
What strange mixtures ! What an intellectual 011a Podrida ! 
What a vast variety of topics, and in what singular juxta- 
position! And all treated of oracularly, and the dictum of 
of the mighty '^ive^^ applied to matters, often, in their na- 
ture, the farthest from the knowledge of their conductors, 
or with which, a superficial acquaintance is the most that 
can be predicated of their education, opportunities and gen- 
eral habit of thought, and of which, their ignorance is not 
blameable, except when it pretends to be knowledge and is 
employed accordingly. Amid news, foreign and domestic, 
commercial inteUigence, political disquisitions, and adver- 
tisements of various kinds, their original and legitimate to- 
pics ; are found, frequently, discussions of the most sacred 
themes, involving abstruse doctrinal points, and the deepest 
mysteries of religion, side by side with a tale of fiction of 



51 

questionable morality, a comic song, a criticism of a play or 
an opera, or the merits of a tragedian, a vocalist and a 
danseuse, and to spice it all, dark inuendoes against private 
character which it might be perilous to assail openly, and 
a furious assault on a public officer, an opposite political 
party, and sometimes an obnoxious religious denomination. 
Here a vituperative party speech on the hustings, or in the 
state or national legislature ; and there — for the temples of 
the Most High are no longer safe from the intrusion of the 
prying caterers for the press, and propriety and fair play in 
vain restrain them from the work for which they are paid — 
the sermon of some unsuspecting divine, oftener a caricature 
than a faithful transcript, surreptitiously obtained by a reporter, 
and unlawfully used for the benefit of his pocket, by the 
editor;* and mingled up with these, on the same page, a 
description of a public ball or dinner party, with toasts and 
songs appropriate, the transactions of the money changers 
and speculations in the stocks, the sports of the turf, the 



* The legality of the practice is much to be doubted, and the following from 

a London paper of December last, may be considered worthy of notice. 

Copyright of Sermons. — A practice has recently arisen of taking down 
in short-hand the sermons of first-rate preachers, and of forthwith printing and 
publishing them for the pecuniary benefit of the person by whom the short-hand 
writer is employed. We are asked whether the preacher can check the practice 
by any proceedings in the courts of law or equity? In other words, whether such 
an act as we have mentioned amounts to an act of piracy? The two main prin- 
ciples upon which copyright depends are these ; — First, that it is originally a 
species of property; secondly, that it does not pass to other hands by the act of 
publication. There can be no doubt that a sermon, like a poem, a treatise, a his- 
tory, or any other manuscript, is the fruit of a man's own labor; that up to the 
time of delivery it is his own property ; and until that time it is subject to his ex- 
clusive disposal. Thus there can be no doubt that the first of the two principles 
of copyright is applicable to a sermon. The diflftculty of the question, such as it 
is, will be found to ai'ise upon the second of these pi'inciples. The delivery of a 
sermon from the pulpit amounts to a publication. The hearer listens for his own 
instruction, pleasure and improvement. For the same objects he may reduce the 
whole to writing: but it does not therefore follow that he may print and publish 
it for his pecuniary benefit. We see nothing in the relation of the preacher to his 
congregation which can sanction such a step. His duty is to teach and to instruct, 
to point out religious duty, to persuade his congregation to be zealous in discharge 
of it; but not to make them a present of an essay which they may publish with a 
profit. — Laio Magazine. 



52 

proceedings and testimony of a criminal trial, before judg- 
ment, doing serious injury and manifest injustice to the 
accused ; law and police reports, embracing every variety of 
crime, from murder, piracy and forgery, to the details of 
petty larceny, and the disgusting and polluting disclosures 
of a brothel. What sort of public opinion may we expect 
which is thus engendered and diffused, misled and perverted 
as it is by that which purports to be its originator, director 
and embodiment, and tainted and poisoned by the very ali- 
ment with which it is fed? What chance for it to be true, 
pure, discriminating, candid, just, reUable? And who can 
contemplate its progress, and anticipate its results without 
deep soKcitude and well founded alarm ? If this state of 
things continues, if it is suffered to grow, if it be not 
in some way essentially modified and corrected and re- 
strained, where, soon, will be our morals, where our liberties, 
where all that is valuable and precious to us as individuals 
and as a community ? 

Of this prevailing licentiousness of the public press, that 
which is especially devoted to the cause of religion — itself 
a distinguishing feature of the period under consideration, 
and previously unknown — partakes too much, in its tone 
and spirit, and in some of its objectionable practices. In 
journals, designed as they frequently profess in their adver- 
tisement, "for Sunday reading," (too often read before and 
in the place of the Word of God on that holy day,) we 
perceive, side by side with grave discussions of the most 
solemn of all subjects, with affecting appeals to the heart 
and the conscience, with sermons and religious essays ; 
articles which exhibit little of the mind that was in Christ 
Jesus, the worldly news of the week, the proceedings of 
Congress when in session, perhaps a political speech of 
general interest occasionally, and by way of variety, a mur- 



53 

der, or a robbery, or a case of suicide, sometimes ad- 
vertisements of goods and merchandise, and the state of the 
money market, with other matters strictly of *' the earth, 
earthy;" and frequently a manifestation of the uncandid, unfair 
and malicious misrepresentations of a portion of the secular 
press. What sort of religious public opinion may we antici- 
pate will be thus created, and how far, in its spirit and sub- 
stance, accordant with the gospel ? What must be the effect 
of such a strange medley on the mind ? All, or nearly all, 
will read the secular intelligence first, and perhaps the ad- 
vertisements; and then, the more racy controversial articles, 
particularly if they abound, as they too often do, in gall and 
bitterness, (taiitance, animis ccelestihus irce !) and '•^ give it,^^ as 
the phrase goes, to some obnoxious opinion, or some individual 
or denomination supposed to hold such an opinion ; and last 
of all, if at all, the grave essay, the edifying homily, the 
instructive exposition, and the solemn warnings, reproofs, 
and appeals to the heart. Are papers so conducted, so 
composed, particularly calculated to promote the cause they 
profess to advocate, and commend religion in its truthfulness 
of word and spirit to the reader? Are they likely to aid 
the progress of sound morality, to say nothing of the higher 
principles and more sacred and binding obligations of the 
gospel? 

When the press, invaluable as it is in its purity and 
freedom, abuses its freedom, and degenerates into licentious- 
ness; when it lends itself, as at times it does, to assail private 
character, violate the sanctity of the domestic circle, and that 
often on the most baseless rumor; when it plays the tyrant 
instead of the protector and guardian; when in its general 
character and spirit it is as has been described — and truly de- 
scribed, for I appeal to what is daily before our eyes for its truth 
— then instead of being the glory of the age, it is its shame and 



54 

bane. And the public taste which it inspires, and the pubHc 
opinion which it creates, controls and gives expression to, 
must be of a kind to cause deep anguish and alarm in the 
contemplation of its progress, and in anticipation of its pro- 
bable results in all matters on which it is made to bear. 
Religion suffers, its real and legitimate influence is impaired 
and arrested, its purity sulHed, its growth retarded, and it 
lies crushed and bleeding and almost lifeless, at the feet of 
fiery controversialists, contending in a spirit foreign to its 
own and which it utterly condemns, more for victory than 
truth. Public morals suffer, their standard is lowered, their 
obligation weakened, their hold on the popular mind re- 
laxed, and gradually broken off. Liberty itself is endan- 
gered ; and in this respect, in this land of equal rights, 
a licentious press is a presage of disaster and ruin; and 
if unrestrained, if not forced back within the limits of ra- 
tional and constitutional freedom, instead of being, as it 
boasts itself to be, the palladium of our liberties, it will 
be their destruction, will sound their knell, will repress in 
pain and grief and dismay, as a vain and hopeless invo- 
cation, the prayer that rises spontaneously in the heart of 
the patriot, when he looks upon this powerful republic and 
its inestimable privileges, and contemplates its present pros- 
perity and glorious destiny — Esto pe7'j)etua. 



APPENDIX. 



Page 12. 
The following statistical statements will exhibit the contrast between Pittsburgh 
and its vicinity now, and a hundred, nay less than sixty years ago; and will also 
serve as a sort of memoranda of the present era : 

TONNAGE OF THE PORT OF PITTSBURGH, 1844. 

MONONGAHELA WHAHF. 

Arrivals. Tonnage. 

Flat Boats, 167 Flat Boats, 2,290 

Keel and Canal Boats, 393 Keel and Canal Boats, 10,225 

Steam Boats, 1,966 Steam Boats, 216,236 

ALLEGHENY WHAKF. 

Flat Boats, 854 Tonnage not given. 

Keel Boats, 78 Wharfage, Monongahela, ^10,435 66 

Steam Boats, 132 " Allegheny, 1,144 91 

CAXAL BOATS OS PENNSYLVANIA CANAL. 

Cleared, 3,007 Tonnage, 105,245 

N. B. In a memorial from the Board of Trade, of Pittsburgh, to the present 
Congress, on the improvement of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, it is estimated, 
" that there are employed on the Mississippi and its tributaries, more than 500 
Steam Boats, of a probable total tonnage exceeding 125,000, navigated by more 
than 20,000 men, at an annual expense of some millions. The money invested 
in these boats is probably ten millions, and the value of the commodities transported 
in them two hundred millions of dollars. Besides the Steamboat trade, an immense 
value of lumber, coal, and agricultural products, annually descend these rivers in 
Keels, Flats, Rafts, &c." The quantity of coal sent to New Orleans, and the 
intermediate markets, from Pittsburgh and its vicinity, in 1844, is estimated by 
competent judges to have amounted to 5,000,000 bushels, equal to 178,571 tons. 
The Iron Works of Pittsburgh, embracing 10 Rolling Mills, 14 Founderies, 
(one of Cannon, particularly mentioned below,) 10 Steam Engine Manufactories, 
Shovel, Spade, and Fork Factories. Anchor and Chain Cable Factories, Steel 
Works, and Wire Factories, employ 2,500 workmen, consume annually 3,400,000 
bushels of coal, turn out annually 42,000 tons of iron, valued at^ §3,200,000. 
There are twenty works employed in the manufacture of Window Glass, making 
each annually about 4,320 boxes of 100 feet: three in the manufacture of vials, 
bottles, demijohns, carboys, &c., making with the botlles from the other factories, 
over $200,000 per annum; and four manufactories of Flint and Cut Glass, manu- 
facturing annually about $250,000 worth, subsisting about 1500 persons. Of the 
five Cotton and one Wool Factories no account has been obtained, and the same 
may be said of a variety of other manufactories of this busy place. The Cannon 
Foundry of Messrs. Freeman, Knapp & Totten, (connected with which, are ma- 
chine castings of various kinds, Steam Engines, I.ocomotive Engines for Railroads, 



56 

&c.,) is deserving of particular notice, for the perfection of its machinery and the 
superiority of its workmanship. It is the only Cannon Foundry west of the 
Alleghenies,and there are but two others in the United States in any respect equal 
to it. There are two boring mills for boring the chamber of the cannon, after 
having been cast, as is the custom, in a solid mass; on each of which may be seen 
at once a dozen pieces of ordnance of the largest size, being perforated with all 
the accuracy and smoothness of a die. Since the works were put in operation, in 
1841-2, they have completed a contract with the United States Government for 
100 thirty-two pound guns and 10,000 thirty-two pound shot, without having a 
solitary gun of the number bursted in the severe test applied by the Ordnance De- 
partment, or rejected on any other account, and only ten out of the 10,000 separate 
shot. There are now lying in their yard, just completed and designed for the Iron 
Steam Frigate, now on the stocks, building by Mi-. Tomlinson, four 64 pound guns, 
each weighing 10,000 pounds. And they are also completing another contract 
with the government for 200 pieces of naval ordnance for the Lakes, thirty-two 
pound guns, twenty-five of which are finished and ready for inspection. The 
writer was richly repaid by an examination of these works, and had, besides, the 
gratification of beholding one of the most beautiful models of naval architecture, in 
the Iron Revenue Steam Cutter, just completed by the same firm and ready to be 
launched, of which particular mention is made in another part of this appendix. 

To increase the contrast between the present and the past, a brief account of two 
valuable pubUc works, belonging to the City of Pittsburgh, is subjoined. 

1. THE PITTSBURGH GAS WORKS. 

These works were constructed in 1836, and the first gas passed into the city 
April 7, 1837. The cost, from the commencement to the present time, is $120,- 
000 of capital, in addition to which, $18,000 of the earnings have been expended 
in rendering the works more beneficial to the public. Nearly eight and a half 
miles of pipe are already laid, and additions are being made every year. Besides 
most of the stores and shops, and some private dw^ellings, several of the churches 
and other public buildings are lighted with this brilliant gas, the most brilliant of 
any in the United States ; and it is moreover employed in lighting two of the 
bridges across the Allegheny river. The quantity of gas made during the year 
1844, was 13,761,420 cubic feet, produced from 36,000 bushels of coal. The 
capacity of the works is such, as to admit, with some additional machinery, a 
supply of gas equal to any demand of the growing population. 

2. THE PITTSBURGH WATER W^ORKS. 

These works were commenced in 1827, and went into operation in November 
1828, and cost $173,346 85. The buildings were on the bank of the Allegheny, 
below the lower bridge, and the reservoir on the hill opposite the new Court House. 
The increasing population requiring a more abundant and permanent supply of 
water, new works were begun about four years ago, on the bank of the same river, 
about a quarter of a mile higher up, and a new reservoir constructed on more ele- 
vated ground, and all completed early in 1844. The water is raised from the 
Allegheny river by means of forcing pumps, worked by powerful steam engines, at 
the rate of 3,000 gallons per minute, and thrown into the reservoir, a distance of 
1,400 feet from the pumps, and 160 feet above their level. The reservoir occupies 
an area on the surface of about 277 feet wide, by 319 in length, with a depth of 15 
feet, and is capable of containing 6,000,000 of gallons. It is partly excavated out 
of the solid rock, which forms the substratum of the hill on which it is placed, and 
partly out of the superincumbent clay, and at its lower end, where the hill declines 
rapidly, there is an artificial embankment, supported by solid mason work of great 
thickness and strength. The annual expense of the works is §5,000 ; and there 
are consumed about 250 bushels of coal per day. The cost of the new works, 
including the ground and buildings, the engines and additional pipes, with the lot 



57 

on which the reservoir is constructed, is §225,532 99 ; and the entire cost of the 
Water Works, since their commencement in 1827, is $452,456 14. 

Page 14. 

The Wire Suspension Aqueduct, now being constructed over the Allegheny- 
River, at Pittsburgh, under the superintendence of John A. RoebUng, Esq., the 
Designer and Contractor, is to supply the place of the wooden structure for the 
same purpose, which was originally built, under the direction of the Pennsylvania 
Canal Commissioners, by the State, as the western terminus of that channel of 
internal navigation. That structure, after having been in use some ten years, had 
become so much twisted and otherwise impaired, as to render it unsafe and useless. 
The Councils of the City of Pittsburgh, by whom, in consequence of an arrange- 
ment with the State, the tolls on this aqueduct are of late received, and who are 
bound to keep the work in repair, on the refusal of the Canal Commissioners to 
rebuild it, decided to rebuild it themselves, and, after considering various plans, 
adopted this of Mr. Roebling, and entered into contract with him to reconstruct the 
communication, for the gross sum, including the repairs of the former piers and 
abutments, of |62,000. 

The Wire Suspension Aqueduct consists of seven spans, of about 160 feet each 
from centre to centre — supported by six piers of solid mason work and two abut- 
ments. The trunk is to be of wood, 14 feet wide at the bottom, and \%^ feet at 
the top, with its sides 84 feet deep, conveying an average depth of 3^ feet of water. 
The sides and bottom are to be formed of a double course of 2^ inch plank, laid 
diagonally, the two courses crossing each other at right angles, so as to form a 
solid lattice work of great strength and stiffness, sufficient to bear its own weight 
and resist the effects of the most violerit storms. The whole of this trunk, with 
towing and foot paths at the sides, is to be supported, in addition, on strong beams 
placed transversely to its sides, and arranged in pairs at a distance of four feet 
apart; each pair of beams to be sustained by two suspension rods of iron, shaped 
like stirrups, and mounted on small cast iron saddles resting on the wire cables, 
which form reversed arches from pier to pier ; and where the cables are strongly 
inclined, or dip considerably, the small saddles are to be prevented from slipping by 
connecting rods, the first of which is to be attached to the saddle. There will be 
but two cables of 7 inches diameter each, suspended at the two sides of the wooden 
trunk. Each cable will consist of 1,900 lengths of wire of i of an inch thick, and 
will possess an aggregate strength of over two miUions of pounds. The two cables 
together will be competent to sustain a weight of more than 2,000 tons. The 
oxidation of the cables is prevented by durable varnish applied to each separate 
wire, in addition to which they will be protected by a solid wrapping of annealed 
wire, well painted. The cables do not extend under ground. Their extremities 
connect with chains which pass under ground, and are anchored to large metal 
plates, covered with heavy masses of masonry, the weight of which resists any 
pressure of the chains. The chains are manufactured of the best boiler scrap iron, 
each bar being forged in one piece without a weld. The links composing the 
chains average four inches, by one and an half inch, and are from four to twelve 
feet long. All the masonry forming the anchorage has been laid in cement and 
mortar, and all the iron is embedded in cement. The preservation of the chains 
under ground, is rendered certain by the known property of lime and cement to 
prevent oxidation. If moisture should find its way to the chains, it will be satu- 
rated with lime, and add another calcareous coating to the iron. On the piers and 
abutments, the cables rest on cast iron saddles. The size of the cable is increased 
at the saddles in two points, by introducing a number of short wires. Swells are 
thus formed, which fit into con-esponding recesses of the casting. The cable is 
then pressed down by three sets of strong wedges, which are driven through corres- 
ponding openings in the sides of the saddle. By this provision the cables are firmly 
connected with the saddles and prevented from slipping. 

7 



58 

The following table will show the principal weights and dimensions of the 
structure. 

Length of the Trunk of the Aqueduct, 1,140 feet, 

Cables 1,175 " 

Aggregate length of Cable and Chains, 1,283 " 

Diameter of Cables, 7 inches. 

Weight of both Cables, 110 tons, 

Total weight of water in the Aqueduct, 1,764 " 

« " in one span, 252 " 

Weight of one span including all, 380 " 

Page 30. 

The impulse to these works of internal improvement in this country, was given 
by the construction of the Eric and Hudson Canal, which connects the waters of 
the great Lakes with the Atlantic, through the Hudson river, into which it enters 
at the cities of Troy and Albany. It is said that the original conception of this 
stupendous work belongs to the Father of his Country, whose sagacious mind com- 
prehended its feasibility, and anticipated its immense advantages. But the glory of 
the actual enterprize is justly due to the wisdom, the skill, the public spirit, the 
moral courage and indomitable perseverance of De Witt Clinton, who planned and 
carried it on to its completion, despite of political opposition and physical obstacles 
which would have deterred a less undaunted and gigantic mind. The advantages 
he anticipated have been more than realized, in the immense inland trade which it 
facilitates, and in its constantly increasing revenue from tolls received, amounting 
in 1844 to §2,154,234 79. 

The example of New York spread with great rapidity, extending its influence 
not only into the adjoining and some of the more distant States of the Union, in 
which canals of nearly equal magnitude have since been completed, but also into 
the British province, which forms its northern boundary, in which that exceedingly 
useful work, the Welland Canal, has been subsequently constructed, aftbrding a 
passage to sailing vessels of large burden from the lower to the upper lakes, 
surmounting by a series of immense works, the otherwise insuperable obstruction 
occasioned by the celebrated cataract of Niagara. 

Of late years, internal improvements in this country, as in Europe, have changed 
their character; and while the canals already constructed have been kept up, and 
that with all the advantages anticipated from them, rail roads, made at less cost and 
with less labor, have taken the lead. They have astonishingly facilitated intercom- 
munication, and are now a common mode of conveyance for passengers and freight 
in a large portion of the Union, particularly the Atlantic States. There is now a 
continuous railroad from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, to Boston, Mass.. and from that 
city, in connection with steamboats on Long Island Sound and elsewhere, to the 
City of Washington, and, indeed, with some slight interruptions, along the Atlantic 
coast into the interior of Georgia. And branching off from this main route, at 
Philadelphia and Baltimore, are two roads to the eastern base of the AUeghenies 
westward. The latter of these railroads, from Baltimore to Cumberland, distance 
180 miles, and traversed in about 10 hours, unites at the latter place with the 
National Macadamized Turnpike, where passengers take post coaches to Wheeling, 
on the Ohio river, a distance of about 130 miles, or, which is far preferable, to 
Brownsville, on the Monongahela, a distance of only 74 miles, and thence in fine 
fast running steam packets on that river to Pittsburgh, which by means of the slack 
water improvement of its navigation recently completed, affords an easy and safe 
conveyance all the year round, except a few weeks in the depth of a severe winter; 
indeed whenever the Ohio is navigable from Wheeling. 

In connection with internal improvements, though at the risk of extending this 
note beyond its intended limits, must not be omitted a work of magnitude recently 
completed, on which the citizens of New York justly pride themselves, the Croton 



59 

Aqueduct, a distinguished physical feature of the last hundred years, and a noble 
monument to future generations of the public spirit of the city which projected and 
carried it into elfect, and of the extraordinary skill of the engineers and architects 
engaged in its construction. This structure, a circular tunnel of solid brick mason- 
ry, extends under ground a distance of about forty miles from its commencement at 
the Croton river, the water of which it conveys to the city of New York, crossing 
in its course, on a substantial bridge, the Harlem river, with several minor streams, 
and pours its contents into three immense reservoirs, contiguous to the city, whence 
it is distributed by many miles of iron pipes through the several streets and squares, 
in some of the latter of which it throws up splejidid jets of water from artificial foun- 
tains. It is a revival of a work which has been little attempted since the days of 
the ancient Romans, and in many respects, particularly in the time occupied in its 
construction, and in its length, is a successful rival of their most celebrated structures 
of the kind. New York may well be proud of it ; but it would not detract from 
her credit, if its cleansing water was somewhat more freely and efficiently used in 
some of her principal streets. 

Page 35. 

As is remarked in the lecture, the first vessel of any size, constructed of iron, was 
built in this city, by the enterprize and skill of our own mechanics, iu 1839 ; since 
which time several vessels of much larger size have been constructed for the United 
States, the dimensions of which are given below. The first vessel was the steam 
packet Valley Forge, built and owned by Messrs. William C. Robinson, Benjamin 
Minis, and Reuben Miller, Jr., Steam Engine Builders and Founders, at a cost, inclu- 
dingEngines, Cabin, Furniture, &c., of about ^51,000. The length of her keel,160 
feet ; beam, 25 feet, and hold in depth 6 feet. The work was commenced in March 
1839, the keel laid in April, the vessel finished and launched in September, and on 
the 10th of December, in the same year, she started on her first trip to New Orleans. 
This elegant packet is a great favorite with the travelling public, and has been in 
constant employ ever since she was completed, running principally between this city 
and St. Louis, but frequently changing her route to New Orleans at the proper season. 

The second vessel built here was the Naval Steamer for Lake Eric, by Messrs. 
Stackhouse <fe Tomlinson, of the following dimensions and weight: Extreme 
length, 156 feet; beam, 27 feet; depth of hold, J 2 feet: measurement, 495 tons. 
Weight of hull, outfits, &c., exclusive of engines, about 260 tons. Two engines of 
1 50 horse power. Whole cost about § 1 60,000. This vessel was constructed and put 
together temporarily here, then taken to pieces, and the whole materials transported 
by the Ohio river to Beaver, thence by the Cross Cut canal which intersects the 
Ohio canal at Akron, thence by the latter canal to Cleveland, and thence by the 
lake to Erie, where the work was again put together permanently, and the vessel 
completed and launched about a year ago, being about eighteen months from the 
laying of the keel in this city. 

Within the last eighteen months two revenue cutters, one designed for the 
lakes, and the other for the Gulf of Mexico, have been built by Messrs. Freeman, 
Knapp & Totten. The one for the lakes having been first put together here, was 
taken to pieces, and transported by the route before mentioned, to Oswego on lake 
Ontario, where she was completed and launched in November last. This vessel, 
called the Jefferson, has the Ericson submerged propeller, and is of the following 
dimensions: extreme length, 140 feet; beam, 24 feet; depth of hold, 11 feet; 
measures 340 tons, and will cost about $80,000. The other destined for the 
Gulf of Mexico, is finished and ready for launching. She is fitted with Hunter's 
submerged propeller, and is of the following dimensions: extreme length, 153 feet ; 
beam, 23 feet, depth of hold, 12 feet; measures 409 tons, and will cost about 
$110,000. In addition to these before mentioned vessels, another built within 
the last six months, by Mr. Joseph L. Tomlinson, formerly of the firm of Stack- 
house & Tom'inson, for Lieut. McLaughlin, U. S. N., has just been launched. 



60 

She is fitted with the Hunter propeller, with two engines of 90 horse power. The 
dimensions of this vessel are as follows : extreme leng;th, 100 feet ; beam, 18 feet ; 
depth of hold, 8| feet; measures about 160 tons, and has taken about 40 tons of 
iron in the construction of her hull and outfits. 

The same gentlemen has another vessel on the stocks for the United States 
Government, a war steamer or steam frigate of the largest class. She is 185 feet 
long, 32 feet wide, 19 feet deep, measures about 1000 tons, and will consume about 
420 tons of iron in her hull and outfits. She is also to have a Hunter propeller 
with two engines, and will be the largest iron vessel in the United States, 

Page 37. 

From Clsfs CCincmnatiJ Advertiser. 

THE EARLY STEAMBOATS OF THE WEST. 

The first steamboat that ever navigated the Ohio and Mississippi, was the " Or- 
leans." She was built at Pittsburgh in 181 2, carried 300 tons, had a low pressure 
engine, and was owned by, and constructed for Fulton & Livingston, of New 
York. Started from Pittsburgh in December 1812, and arrived at New Orleans 
on the 24th of the same month, plied regularly between New Orleans and Natchez, 
until the Mth of July, 1814, when on her trip to the latter place, being opposite 
Baton Rouge, while lying by at night, and the river falUng at the time, she settled 
on a sharp stump and became wrecked. Her trips during that period averaged 
seventeen days. She was abandoned, and her engine with a new copper boiler, 
made in New York, was put into a new boat in 1818, called the " New Orleaxs." 
which only ran until the spring of 18 19, when she also was sunk by a stump on the 
same side of the river, below Baton Rouge, but was raised by two schooners 
brought to Ne\V Orleans between them, and there lost totally near the Batture. 

The next in the order of time, was the Co3iet, 145 tons, owned by Samuel 
Smith, also built at Pittsburgh, on French's stern wheel and vibrating cylinder patent, 
granted in 1809. The Comet made a trip to Louisville in the summer of 1813, 
and reached New Orleans in the spring of 1814, made two voyages to Natchez, 
and was then sold, and the engine put up in a cotton gin. 

Next came the Vesuvius, of 390 tons, built at Pittsburgh, November, 1813, 
by R. Fulton, and owned by a company in New York and New Orleans. She 
started for New Orleans in May, 1814, Frank Ogden being Captain, and was the 
first boat that made any effort to reach the Falls, having left New Orleans with 
freight in the early part of July of the same year, but grounded on a sand bar about 
700 miles up the Mississippi, on the 14th of July, and lay there till the 3rd of 
December, when a rise in the river floated her off, and she returned to New Or- 
leans, when she was put in requisition for military service by Gen. Jackson, but 
in starting up the river for wood, she grounded on the Batture, and became useless 
to the Government. The succeeding year she plied between New Orleans and 
Natchez, under the command of Captain Clement, who was succeeded by Cap- 
tain John De Hart. In 1816 she took fire, near New Orleans, and burnt to the 
water's edge, having a valuable cargo on board. The fire commmiicated from the 
boilers, which in the first style of building, were in the hold. The hull was after- 
wards raised and built upon at New Orleans. After making several trips to Louis- 
ville, she was broken up in 1820. 

The fourth steamboat was the Enterprise, of 100 tons, built at Brownsville, 
Pa., by Daniel French, on his patent, and owned by a company at that place. 
She made two voyages to Louisville in the summer of 1814, under the command 
of Capt. J. Gregg. On the first of December of the same year, she took in a cargo 
of ordnance stores at Pittsburgh, and started for New Orleans. Henry M. Shreve 
commander. She made the voyage in 14 days, being a quick trip, all circum- 
stances considered, and was then despatched up the river to meet two keels, which 
had been delayed on the passage, laden with small arms. These she met twelve 



61 

miles above Natchez, took their masters and the cargoes on board, and returned 
to New Orleans, having been six and a half days absent, in which time she ran 624 
miles. She was then for some time actively employed in transporting troops and 
supplies for the army, engaged under Gen. Jackson, in the defence of New Or- 
leans. She made one voyage to the Gulf of Mexico, as a cartel, one to the rapids 
of Red River with troops, and nine voyages to Natchez. She set out for Pitts- 
burgh on the 6th of May, and arrived at Shippingport on the 13th, being 25 days 
out, and proceeded thence to Pittsburgh, being the first steamboat that ever as- 
cended the whole length of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. A public dinner was 
given at Louisville to Captain Shreve, for effecting a passage in that space of time, 
so wonderful and important was it considered. The man who at that dinner would 
have predicted that there were those present who would live to see steamboats per- 
form that trip in five days, twenty days less than Shreve's effort, would have been 
pronounced insane, or at any rate a mere visionary, yet less than a lapse of thirty 
years has served to accomplish it. She made one more trip down, her Captain 
being D. Worley, when she was lost in Rock Harbor, at Shippingport. 

The "Etxa," of 360 tons, was the next one built, owned by the same company 
as the Vesuvius, length 153 feet, breadth 28 feet, with 9 feet depth of hold. She 
left for New Orleans under the command of Captain A. Gale, and made trips suc- 
cessively to Natchez and Louisville. There being some want of confidence in 
steam power to ascend the Mississippi with a cargo above Natchez, she was em- 
ployed in the summer of 1815 towing ships from the mouths or passes of the 
Mississippi to New Orleans, the barges then getting freight in preference at eight 
cents per lb. from New Orleans to Louisville. In the fall of 1815, the Mississippi 
being very low, the owners of the Etna made another attempt to ascend the river, 
and put in about two hundred tons, for which they charged 4^ cts. per lb. for heavy, 
and 6 cts. for light goods. She had very few passengers above Natchez. The 
dependence was on drift wood, and occasionally lying by two and three days where 
settlements were made, waiting while wood was being cut and hauled, broke a 
wrought iron water wheel shaft, near the mouth of the Ohio, and laid by at Hen- 
derson, Kentucky, fifteen days, trying to weld it, and had at last to end the passage 
with one wheel to Shippingport in sixty days. At Louisville she had two shafts 
cast. Her next trip down with three hundred tons at 1 cent per lb. with a few pas- 
sengers, was made in seven days. The succeeding trip up, under the same diffi- 
culties, was made in thirty days, breaking the other wrought iron shaft by drift- 
wood, in ascending the Ohio. 

The sixth in order of time, was the Despatch, Captain J. Gregg; built at 
Brownsville, on French's patent, and owned by the same company with the En- 
terprise. She made several voyages from Pittsburgh to Louisville and back, and 
one from the Falls to New Orleans and back to Shippingport, when she gave out 
in 1818. 

The next were the Buffalo, 300 tons, and James Monroe, 90 tons, built at 
Pittsburgh, by B. H. Latrobe, for a company at New York. He failed to finish 
them for want of funds. They were sold by the sheriff and fell into the hands of 
Ithama Whiting, who finished them with engines^ — both dull sailers. 

The Washington was the ninth, and the first at Wheeling, Virginia, where 
she was built under the superintendence of Captain H. M. Shreve, who was part 
owner. The engine was made at Brownsville. This was the first boat with 
boilers on deck. The Washington crossed the Falls in September, 1816; went 
to New Orleans, and returning wintered at Louisville. Li March, 1817, she left 
Shippingport for New Orleans, and made her trip up and down in forty-five days, 
including detention at New Orleans. This was the trip which was considered to 
settle the practicability of steamboat navigation in the West. 

N. B. The credit of the first material improvement of the steam engine and 
steam boats, is due to the late ingenious Col. Stevens, of Hoboken and his sons. 
They greatly simplified and perfected the machinery, and improved the model and 
commodiousness of the vessels ; first, in those splendid boats, the New Philadelphia, 



62 

the Albany and the North America, long the delight of travellers on the Hudson, 
and then in other boats on the Delaware. Their example created a new era in 
steam boat construction, and has been successfully followed up by others every year, 
until now little is left to be desired, in respect of model, size, fitting up, machinery, 
or speed. 

Page 47. 

As illustrative of the improvements in and the activity and power of the press, 
the reminiscences of an highly gratifying visit to the immense establishment of 
Harper & Brothers, of the city of New York, in September last, is subjoined. The 
enterprising proprietors politely afforded me every facility to examine their exten- 
sive printing office, with such portions of the book bindery as my limited time 
would allow. I was astonished at the extent of the operations carried on and the 
work accomplished. They have in constant use 18 steam power presses, which 
are printing at the rate of 17,000 volumes 18 mo. — or .5000 volumes 8 vo. per 
day — doing the work of about 120 of the old fashioned hand presses. And they 
employ in all in their establishment about 300 persons. They informed me there 
are several other large printing and publishing offices in New York, which I had 
not time to visit, as well as in Philadelphia, Boston, and other Atlantic cities, all 
of which have introduced the power press; and that the introduction of the same 
invention (the best now known invented and manufactured by Adams, of Boston) 
into newspaper offices, has increased the faciUties for that species of printing, be- 
yond those of printing books. The improvements in the printing press within the 
last thirty years, they remarked, have been truly wonderful ; so much so, that the 
work which is now executed on the power press by twenty-five hands, would have 
required on the old press two hundred and fifty. Great improvements have also 
been introduced into the manufacture of type and paper. In the application of steam 
to the manufacture of the latter, as has fallen under my own observation in some of 
the paper manufactories in the west, the rapidity of the process is beyond measure 
astonishing. The number and variety of the works printed and published by the 
Messrs. Harpers within the twelve last years is almost incredible — many of them 
standard works of great value, with a large proportion of the best light literature of 
the day. They have been active and important agents in the dififusion of knowl- 
edge : and in facilitating the operations of the human mind, in almost every depart- 
ment of literature and science, particularly in their accurate and beautiful editions 
of the ancient classics, edited by Prof. Anthon, of Columbia College. 



I THE LAST HUNDEED YEAES. 



LECTURE 



DELIVERED IN THE HALL OF THE WESTERN UNIVERSITY 



OF PENNSYLVANIA, 



ON TUESDAY EVENING, FEB. 4, 1845, 



AT THE REQUEST OF THE PHILOMATHEAN LITERARY INSTI- 
TUTE, AND PUBLISHED IN AID OF THE LIBRARY 
FUND OF THAT ASSOCIATION, 



/ 



BY 



GEORGE UPFOLD, M. D. D. D. 



President of the Board of Trustees of the University, one of the Counsellors of the Historical Society 

of Western Pennsylvania, and a Corresponding Member of the National 

Institute for the promotion of Science. 




PITTSBURGH : 
PRINTED BY GEORGE PARKIN, FOURTH STREET. 

1845. 



